ACCESS TO ORIGINS:

By Penny Partridge MSW and Miriam Robinson MSW candidate

Background

In 1984, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a bill which would stop PA-born adult adoptees from having access to their pre-adoption birth certificates. Such access to their origins had been available through the 1953 Vital Statistics Law. Once the bill had been signed into law by Governor Thornburgh, there remained sixty days in which PA-born adoptees, and the adoptive parents of minors born in PA, could still request the pre-adoption birth certificate.

The Adoption Forum is a self-help organization of adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents of adoptees. For six years, this group had worked to prevent the passage of this legislation which deprives adoptees of the legal right to know the identities of their birth parents. To warn adopted people that they had only until February 9, 1985, to request their pre-adoption birth certificate, the Adoption Forum organized a publicity campaign, which, along with the efforts of other groups across the state, resulted in over 4,000 people sending for this document.

More than 400 calls had come in to the Adoption Forum office from people asking for specific directions about how to obtain the pre-adoption birth certificate. We decided to follow up on those adoptees who had called us on their own behalf. We wanted to obtain as clear a picture as possible of what it meant to these adoptees to possess their pre-adoption birth certificate. Because adoptees had lost access to their origins for the sake of the supposed interests of their birth parents, we felt that in future efforts to present and defend the "competing" interests of the adoptees themselves, we would need to be as specific as possible.

Participants

In September, 1985, we mailed a questionnaire to 308 people whom we believed from our records to have been adoptees born in PA who had called specifically for instructions about obtaining their pre-adoption birth certificate. We did hear from some recipients of our questionnaire that they had called our office for information but had been born in another state. We estimate that at least 275 PA-born adoptees actually received our questionnaire and thus had the opportunity to participate in our study somewhere between eight and ten months after their initial call to us.

The ninety-five people who returned our questionnaire (35% of 275) MIGHT represent those adoptees who are the most comfortable with self-reflection and sharing personal experiences with relative strangers. They might also represent those who were most AWARE of the importance for them of learning of their origins and/or who best understood how their participation in this study might benefit them personally or might contribute to a clearer picture of the adoptee experience in general.

It seem interesting to note that the original 308 adoptees to whom we mailed our questionnaire included 102 males, or a third of the total group. This suggests that although female adoptees may be twice as likely to demonstrate an interest in their origins or in their experience as adoptees, this is not as exclusively a female interest as many people assume it to be. And the return rate for males sent the questionnaire was only five per cent lower than for females, so males were almost as willing as females to participate in the study itself.

Our ninety-five respondents include sixty-seven females and twenty-eight males. They range in age from seventeen to sixty, with a mean age of 31, median age of 29, and with 70 of the 95 (almost three quarters) in their twenties or thirties. Twenty-six currently live in Philadelphia, forty-six in the metropolitan area surrounding Philadelphia, and twenty-one outside Metropolitan Philadelphia. Forty listed their religious background as Protestant, twenty-nine as Catholic, nine as Jewish. Three had less than a high school education, twenty-four had finished twelfth grade, thirty-seven had had between 12 and 16 years of school, and twenty-seven had a college degree or more.

Data Related to Growing Up Adopted

The age at which adoptees in our study learned they were adopted ranged from before they could remember to age thirty-nine. Sixty-five per cent knew about being adopted by the time they were six, twenty-four per cent learned about their adoptions from age seven to twelve, six per cent learned during their teen years (13 to 18), and three per cent after the age of 18. For the people who learned about their adoptions after the age of six, there seems to be a significant over-representation of Protestants. ( 52% of the adoptees in our study have Protestant backgrounds.) Not unexpectedly, the adoptees who knew they had been adopted through an agency had a higher percentage among them who had known about their adoptions by the age of six than those adoptees who knew they had been adopted privately ( 77% of the agency adoptees compared with only 58% of the privately adopted).

Eighty-one per cent of the adoptees in our study had learned about being adopted form one or both of their parents (usually the mother), two per cent from other adoptive relatives, five percent from non-related adults, one percent from a peer; and eight per cent had made their own discovery of their adoptive status. (This was, typically, through discovering papers or overhearing a conversation.) Of those who learned from a source other than their parents, there is a higher than expected proportion of males (44% compared to the 30% of our respondents who are male), so it seems there was more parental reluctance to talk with their boy children about their being adopted. It may also be, however, that mothers talk more with their daughters than with their sons about relationships in general.

While 53% of our respondents knew that they had been adopted through an agency, and 26% knew that their adoptions had been arranged by a doctor or lawyer, 18% did not know who had arranged their adoptions. These tended to be among the older adoptees, which reinforces the common assumption that there has been increasing openness in adoptive families.

Obtaining the Pre-Adoptive Birth Certificate

All but six people in our study did receive their pre-adoptive birth certificate, with two people running out of time to apply before the deadline, two people being notified that there was none on file for them, one person simply receiving nothing back, and one person receiving a certificate that was not hers.

Sixty-five per cent of the respondents told us that if it were not for the new law, they probably would have postponed requesting the document until a later time. Reasons given for postponement in the past or for their hypothetical postponement (if the law had not changed) included:

-Lack of interest
-lack of courage
-other preoccupations
-anticipations of distress that they did not want to face until later and
-(the most often recorded reason) a concern about hurting their adoptive families.

Only forty adoptees in our study had told their adoptive parents about obtaining their pre-adoption birth certificate, with one person giving an unasked for explanation: "They would die if they had been told." Among the adoptees whose adoptive parents were still alive and who had chosen not to tell them were most of the people who had found out about being adopted from someone other than their parents. (Twelve out of fourteen of these continued the family pattern of not telling, while 56% of the adoptees who had learned they were adopted from their still alive parents, let these parents know they had obtained the document.

For the forty who had told their adoptive parents, just over half received clear support and interest. A number of adoptees mentioned that their adoptive parents' responses were "cautious": (in one adoptee's words) "first cautious, then interest, then when they realized it was important to me and it helped to resolve my feelings, they became very supportive." At the other end of the adoptive parent responses, however were" hate and fear," "mother evasive and belligerent, father hurt;" "Horrible crying." It is certainly not a groundless fear for some adoptees that their adoptive parents would be very upset by their interest in their origins.

Our questionnaire listed seven possible reasons that the respondents may have had for wanting to obtain their pre-adoption birth certificate. We asked that they check as many of these as they believed were important to them when they did send for the document; and we also asked that they indicate the reason "most important" reason (but few seemed to be able to narrow it down to one MOST important reason).

- 75 checked obtaining their birth parents' names
- 60 checked having a means of learning medical history
- 53 checked being able to contact their birth mother
- 52 to be able to know their birth parents' ethnic background
- 45 to possess an unaltered document of their birth
- 43 to be able to contact the birth father
- 43 to be able to contact siblings

In the space for "Other" (reason), four adoptees wrote in that they wanted their own original name or identity. The following were other "write-in" answers: "just to know for peace of mind," "truth!!!", "just to feel I belonged to something or someone!", "proof to my eight half brothers and sisters that I was their sister" "to have a history."

Search Efforts After Receiving Birth Certificate

Eight to ten months after receiving their pre-adoption birth certificate, just over half of the adoptees in our study ( 49, or 52%) had made an attempt to locate one or more of their birth relatives. Neither gender nor age nor when one learned one was adopted seemed to influence significantly the likely hood of being a "searcher" in this situation. We did notice, however, that of the 27 least educated people, 63% of them had made search attempts, while of the twenty-seven least educated people, 63% of them had made search attempts, while of the twenty -seven most educated, only 26% had tried to find someone. And of the eighteen people who had found out about being adopted from someone other than their parents, 72% of them had become "searchers".
Of the forty-five adoptees who had not done any searching, all but four said they were likely to do so in the future. The most common reason given for postponing a search was

- not enough information or know-how (11) followed by
- fear of rejection or of the unknown (9)
- loyalty to adoptive parents (9)
- not enough time or money (8)
- concern about disturbing their birth parents (4)
- not emotionally ready (2).

For the four who did not anticipate a search at any point in the future, this was in two cases out of loyalty to the adoptive parents, in one case because the birth mother was presumed to have "her own life to live," and in one case because "it doesn't serve any purpose." At the same time, some very interesting comments came from one of these adoptees, a thirty-year-old woman who loyally stated, "My adoptive family is my family." In other parts of the questionnaire, she wrote,

"very comforting to know I was born and at least my natural parents' names and so, probably, my ethnic origins. It is good to be sure I HAD natural parents before I came to live with my adoptive parents Felt that I finally had some identification with a past which O had had little control over and knew nothing about. This added something missing and very legitimate to my identity Everyone has a right to the legal document of their birth. As a baby I also spent time in foster homes, would REALLY like to know more about those experiences

Clearly thought she feels it is unlikely that she will ever try to find her birth parents, she is not denying the importance to her of knowing about her origins.

Of the forty-nine adoptees who had tried to find a birth relative, thirty-one of them (63%) had in less than a year been able to locate at least one birth relative, if not more. Seventeen of them had found their birth mothers, whose responses to being found they described in the following ways (included here one by one to provide as specific a picture as these individual descriptions can - the order is that in which the questionnaires were returned): "did not meet with me," "pleased and shocked," "warm," "surprised and warm," "scared," shocked/informative/seemed cold at first but this was an act to keep from becoming involved, then we cried together;" no response to my letter," "welcoming, warm;" "very pleased," shocked," "denial that she's the right person," "overwhelming joy," "shocked, then glad:' "shock/negative," "very happy," " pleased," "wary but pleasant." Also found were four birth fathers, a grandmother, many siblings and several aunts and uncles; all of these (like the birth mothers) had very individual responses to being found.

Emotional Effects of Receiving Certificate

Since we were particularly interested in how receiving the pre-adoption birth certificate had effected adoptees emotionally, we asked about this three different ways -- each quite open-ended, as we did not want to put words in people's mouths. To the question, " How would you describe your emotional reaction to receiving the pre-adoption birth certificate?", answers tended to fall into seven distinct categories, with "mixed" (because the word was used many times) being a category in itself, and some answers being counted for more than one category. The seven categories we saw were

- happy: including "joy," "elation" ( mentioned by 28 people)
- "mixed": without reference to specific feelings (26)
- relief (18)
- disappointment that the document did not contain more information (15)
- real or grounded: any indication of feeling a more concrete sense of themselves or their situation (14)
- numbness: or "no feeling" (5)
- anxious, including one man's comment that he had still not managed to open the envelope (5)

We noticed more tendency on the part of younger adoptees to have been disappointed by not receiving more information, while both older adoptees and males made much more mention of additional groundedness. Females were much more likely to report "mixed" feelings, which may simply be a term females more commonly use than males.
To ask about people's reactions in another way, we had a place for them to indicate whether or not they felt any differently toward themselves, their adoptive parents, of their birth parents, and how their feelings may have changed in these directions. More than half of or respondents indicated "no difference" or ignored all or part of this set of questions. But those who did describe a difference in how they felt about themselves wrote, "less in limbo," "more connected," "more legal," "more complete," "surer of myself," "my situation seems more real," "I have a better understanding of my ethnicity," and " I know I was REAL, not just a throw-away."

Concerning how their feelings had changed toward their adoptive parents, all but two who gave any answer reported more positive feelings, such as "more appreciative," "Love them more," and "new respect." The other two were now wishing that their adoptive parents had been more open with them. The reported changes in feelings toward birthparents centered either around wanting more than ever to meet them or learn more about them or around feeling that their birthparents were seeming so much more like real people now.

The final way in which we attempted to learn how people were affected by receiving their pre-adoption birth certificate was to ask if they had noticed any changes in themselves or their relationships which they attributed to knowing more about their origins. They were directed to the blank back of the questionnaire and to be as lengthy in their answer as they wished. ( Many left it completely blank, many filed up the whole page.) The quotes used here were chosen, for their relevance to the question asked, for their variety, and eloquence. These adoptees speak so well to their own experience that we will let them have the last words:

" I seem to be at peace with myself and my life. There is no longer this big unknown in my life."

"Changed? You bet I am. I believe in myself more than ever before."

"As a child I needed to know why I was so different and who made me so very different. I still wonder now -- each passing minute seems to be dedicated to day dreams of my biological parents. I desire to touch them, laugh with them, even become disappointed by not being accepted by them. It really hurts to know my birth was a confusing time for my biological parents, but I thank the Lord for providing me with a family full of love and understanding "

"My husband has been a great help in my search. This has brought us closer and we have shared very deep emotions."

I am taking more charge of my life and ( a summary) I got a sudden advancement at work which I think is because of this. I have a new sense of connectedness, including connectedness to grief about not meeting my birthparents before they died and connectedness to joy in finding brothers who are so much like me emotionally."

"I am more relaxed about being an adoptee, and my adoptive family is now more relaxed."
"My original birth certificate was void of any information regarding my birthfather The fact that this information was never entered makes me feel a sense of abandonment by men. I tend to take a long time to open up in a relationship. I'm extremely afraid of becoming vulnerable and being abandoned once again."

"I feel that I am more assertive, for I have accomplished answering at least a few unanswered questions -- a goal I had thought was unobtainable."

"Getting this birth certificate made me feel a bit more complete. I've always felt too many pieces were missing. On a purely emotional level, I can sum up my feelings this way: Being adopted can be a real bitch! I've just never felt complete."

"Receiving my original birth certificate completed a gap that I had always felt -- the gap between birth and adoption. It made me feel my birthparents were real and that my "home" for the nine months before birth was in a real person. It's hard to explain -- like KNOWING I was born rather than ASSUMING I was born. Does that make sense?"

The only change I have noticed is that since I began looking into the process of searching for relatives and records, I have found that many people are very interested in hearing about it. This was always a very personal subject for me because I felt that no one would understand or be interested in discussing my adoption."

"I feel no emotional changes. I feel that I was always a complete person and do not place a great deal of importance on hereditary factors. It is simply interesting to have solved a mystery, and it would have been nice to meet my birthmother. However, she has a right to her privacy." ( This adoptee had written her birthmother a letter but received no response.)

"I am still ritualistically isolated by my double identity and withdraw when relationships evolve toward commitment. I remain strangely hungry for my birthmother's physical presence in my life. "

"Since finding my natural family ( mother, father, and three siblings), if I have questions ( which are always coming up), I can call and get answers. There are new people, blood kin, in my life now, None of this would have been possible if I had not been able to obtain my personal birth certificate. YES, it raises more questions; YES it may be painful; YES, everyone's lives become more complicated. I as an adult have the right -- if I have the courage -- to know my background and beginnings. What I do with that information is no more than the province of government that my decision to marry or move.

"Knowing more about where I came from makes me feel that I am 'okay' and that I don't need to hide a part of myself, and that people around me aren't trying to hide a part of myself from me. This is part of the reason I have such respect for my adoptive parents. They have always been honest with me and trusted me with this information, which is a part of our trusting and honest relationship."

Penny Partridge, MSW is a poet adoptee/adoptive parent and co founder of Adoption Forum

"Miriam Robinson was working on an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work when she did a community project with Adoption Forum. This meant spending a half day a week in our office. The following year, she continued to be involved in Adoption Forum as she worked on a Master's Thesis about birthmothers. This was inspired by a relative of Miriam's who is a birthmother and who, since the thesis was written, has met the daughter she had placed for adoption."

Adoption Forum, Inc., PO Box 12502, Philadelphia, PA 19151
Tel: 215-238-1116

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Credit for this publication goes to http://www.adoptionforum.org/ae/adopteeoriginsstudy.htm