I MET BARRY IN THE CITY LIBRARY where he had spent the last two hours trying to track down a name in city directories. “Today's my day for Toronto and Saskatoon,” he told me. “I have my mother's name, but since I was given up nineteen years ago, she probably married and changed her name, so I'm looking for her parents. I thought it would be easy, but I'm having a hard time finding any information at all.”
Barry was good-looking, personable, and athletic. He spoke easily and confidently, an asset in his jobs as a salesman in a sport's shop in the winter and as a golf instructor in the summer. He lived in the suburbs with his adoptive parents and older brother, and seemed happy, stable, reasonable, and intelligent. Although he had always known that he was adopted, he hadn't been interested in it until this year, his “year for searching.” The local Parent Finders Association had helped him, but he had received no help from social workers. He sees social workers as obstructive—looming like a standing army protecting government information. Barry understood that the social workers had to obey the law, so he sent letters of protest to his legislative representative asking that the laws be changed.
Barry and I ate our hamburgers and talked about the problems of searching for a past. He was curious and wanted the information, but he didn't feel that his life would be blighted if he never found it. His adoptive parents approved of his search, helping him get to started and encouraging him. Barry had no plans to live with his birth parents or get very involved in their lives, but he wanted to sit down and talk to them as if they were friends he hadn't seen in a long time.
He had given his reasons for searching quite a lot of thought. “It took me three or four months to decide to search. I started by phoning the Zenith Child Line. The person who answered gave me the Parent Finders' number. So I phoned it one evening. I didn't know what was going to happen. I was really hopped up for it, and I was kind of nervous. The phone picked up, and it was a recording. What a let-down! So then I sent off a letter and I got more and more interested. The head of Parent Finders here isn't doing the search for me, but has given me a lot of advice. I got hold of the lawyer who did the adoption and he still had my adoption order. He didn't want to give it to me at first, but he finally did, and that's how I found my name.”
Changing laws come from changing attitudes. This lawyer probably was reacting to the changing attitudes toward the adoptees' right to know their origins.
“I'm getting more and more interested in the search now. I asked the social workers for more non-identifying information and they wouldn't give me anything. To them it's not important. To me it is. I just want to know things like, was my grandfather Ukrainian? It seems kind of stupid to be against the law to find that out. I know they're trying to protect the birth parents; they don't want anything coming back. I tried to get information from the hospital because technically, for a couple of days, 7 was a patient. The administrator said, ‘Well, we can't give you information in case the mother doesn't want you to know. She could file a suit against us.' I'm not sure that I couldn't file one too.”
Today in Barry's province when adoptees ask the social worker for information, they should at least receive non-identifying information. More and more people are becoming aware of the need for connections, and information is not held back with the same kind of righteousness as it was when Barry was searching. Not all states and provinces offer a co-operative attitude, though. Searching can still be difficult.
“I'm really curious about my birth parents and my background. I think it will be interesting to know. I've thought about whether my girlfriend would turn out to be my sister {if she had been adopted too], or if my dad is a famous rock star. It's all really far-fetched, but it's possible. I look at my best friend and I think, ‘He knows who his parents are. What gives the government the right to keep my background from me?' From reading my non-identifying background I get some reasons for what I am, why I happen to have a certain colour of hair. And I play the piano. I took piano lessons for less than a year when I was twelve and I went through five books. It just seemed natural to me and it turns out that my birth father was a musician. He made his living playing in bands for a while.”
I asked him how he got people to give him information. He spoke about being persuasive, a good selling tactic.
“You have to tell stories because you can't go out and just tell people why you're looking. People might decide, ‘Oh, this was all hush-hush way back then' and decide not to tell you anything. And then they might go and warn other relatives not to tell you anything. I make up a kind of story, say I'm looking for an uncle or something. I know enough from my non-identifying information to get some facts straight. What happens if I have a twin or a sister or something? I don't have a sister now, just a brother. Discovering a sister like that would be kind of interesting and neat. I think about that every once in a while. I haven't put an ad in the paper yet. Every day I read the births, deaths, anniversaries, information wanted, and some of the personals.”
After our one meeting, I never heard from Barry again. I expect that he did find his connections, because the law changed in his province shortly after our interview, establishing a reunion registry.
Some teens wanted to search for their birth fathers, but most wanted contact only with their birth mothers. I asked why. The answers were much the same—they wanted to know about themselves and their birth mother was their greatest source of information. They believed that their birth mother was the one person who could satisfy their curiosity and give them a personal history.
I was late for my appointment with Nicole at the fast food restaurant in the centre of Vancouver. She had left when I finally arrived. I called her on the phone and she came back to meet me. Nicole was seventeen, a student in high school, the youngest of two children; her older brother was not adopted.
By the time she was five, Nicole understood that she was adopted. As she grew up she became more interested, doing a report on adoption for her law class in high school. In doing the research for this she found, to her surprise, a negative attitude toward adoption in the books she read. Most were written by authors who had been adopted after infancy and who wanted to return to their birth parents. Nicole didn't share their feelings at all. She knew why she had been given up for adoption and was satisfied that her birth parents did the reasonable thing. Her birth mother and father had been engaged, but had decided not to get married. A month later, her birth mother found she was pregnant and chose to give Nicole to a two-parent family. Nicole would like to meet her some day to get some medical history because she doesn't think the “completely healthy” medical history she received was accurate.
Ambitious for her future, Nicole planned an academic career. Secure and happy where she was, she rated her parents a nine out of ten. But, in spite of her stability and optimism, she wanted to know who she had been.
She had mixed feelings about searching. “I wouldn't want to invade her [birth mother's] privacy. She might be living her own life, trying to block out what happened. It might have been a bad time in her life and I wouldn't want to bring it up again for her. I think I could accept that she might not want to see me. I don't think I would mind.”
Many of the teens I interviewed were concerned that searching for their birth parents would hurt not their birth parents, but their adoptive parents. They recognized the need in themselves to have more information, perhaps even a meeting, but were reluctant to hurt the people they loved. “My dad would be threatened,” Sarah told me, “even though I feel that my mom and dad are the ones I have, not the ones who conceived me. My {adoptive} mom would help me; in fact, she did help me. She saved all the information. She even peeked at the adoption papers when the social worker left her alone in the room. She remembered the information, including my birth mother's name, and gave it to me when I was fifteen. I didn't tell Dad, though. I don't think my mother told him either. He would be upset. So I have my birth mother's name and I looked it up in the telephone book. But I wouldn't phone her. That wouldn't be fair to her, don't you think? Maybe someday I'll get someone else, maybe a searching agency, to call her or find out if she wants to meet me. But not yet.”
Many adoptive parents receive some papers containing “non-identifying history” at the time the baby is placed with them. This is a description of the birth parents and often their parents as well. It has been the policy of many agencies in many provinces and states to include racial origin, height of the parents, skin colouring, eye colour, any talents such as musical ability, and a medical history. It is a cold picture for many teens—as if they had been handed a file-card parent from a collection. Many teens don't have even this information. The adoptive parents may not have been given it, or they got it and didn't pass it on, or it may never have been taken in the first place.
Roberta was fair, pretty, and eager to talk to me about adoption. She lived with her parents and her seventeen- and seven-year-old brothers, neither of whom were adopted. Her family moved into the area, about an hour from Vancouver, when she was twelve. She had no friends at that time and felt unwanted. Previously a good student at school and an easy-going child at home, she became big trouble.
Roberta began lying to her parents all the time. And not only did she shoplift, but she became the leader of a group and planned shoplifting forays into the stores of the town so that the gang would think she was smart, daring, “cool.” She did some drugs, left school, got work, was fired from her job. Then she got pregnant and told the father of the baby. He denied responsibility, so she told her parents she'd been raped. It was an overwhelming mess.
At fifteen she had her baby and placed him for adoption. She wrote him a letter telling him why she placed him for adoption and put her name in the reunion registry, making it as easy as possible for him to find her if he ever wants to. But she realizes that he may never want to.
“I wrote him and told him why I had to give him up. I told him how much I cared. For the ten days I stayed in the hospital with him, I was his mother. I fed him and washed him and looked after him. I'll always have that time with him and he had that time with me. My [birth] mother found me ‘inconvenient.' She was thirty-one. See, there's no excuse. I was just inconvenient. I want to know how my birth mother felt. It's very, very hard to accept the fact that you were given up just because you didn't show up in time. You know ‘Oh, well. Today's not convenient. We'll give you up today. If I'd had you a year from now, maybe I'd have kept you.' I find that hard.”
And yet that is what had happened to Roberta. She had a baby at a time when she couldn't look after him, but her experience did not make her more understanding toward her birth mother.
I asked Roberta if it would have helped her to have met her birth mother at an earlier age.
“If I'd met my birth mother at thirteen it would be different from now. Maybe I'd have been looking for another mother then. Like I could have had two moms then instead of one. Instead of now, when I would be looking maybe for a friend and some answers. Now I've got my mom and I don't need another one and I don't want another one either.
“If I wanted to find her, I guess I could put an ad in the paper. Sometimes I'll see an ad that talks about someone born the same year as me, the same month, wrong day, and it kind of hurts. It's a boy not a girl, and I think, is that ever nice but . . . why couldn't she do that for me? I got the pamphlets [from a searching organization], but they want so much money. … ”
Roberta needed more information about the costs of a search. The cost varies; even passive registries may ask for a fee. When I inquired about what I had to do to find the birth mothers of my boys, the minimum fee for registration in my province was $25. A few years later when I asked, the fee was $50 to register passively, and $250 for an active search. For those with no money, the fee can be waived, but that means applying for and filing an income test and waiting for the application to be approved or disapproved. Roberta could have written or called searching agencies to ask about their types of search and how much they would cost, and whether or not she would qualify for a subsidy.
Years ago, people thought it was better if birth parents and adoptees never met. The purpose of the secrecy laws was to help make the adoptive family more homogenous. An adopted child was supposed to be absorbed into the family like the cream in a bottle of homogenized milk. Shake up the family and let there be no differences between adopted and natural children.
Agencies and lawyers did what they could to conscientiously assure that the birth parents had no way of finding the adopted child. In many provinces and states there were laws which prevented both adopted children and adults from searching for and finding their adoption orders. Previously in British Columbia, section fifteen of the Adoption Act read “. . . an adoption order is not subject to search. No person other than the Attorney General or a person authorized by him in writing, may have access to them; but the court, on an application . . . on good cause shown to the satisfaction of the court may permit . . . the applicant to inspect those documents. … “ This meant that even adopted adults could not search for their birth name and parents without a court order.
Things are different today. In 1996, the laws changed to allow for much greater access to information. Section 19 of the new act reads, in part:
(2) A person referred to in section 60 (1) of the Act may, on application to the director in the form and manner specified by the director, register on the post-adoption openness registry an interest in making an openness agreement to facilitate communication or establish a relationship.
Laws in provinces and states differ, operating from two perspectives. Either they are designed to make connections between all members of the adoption triangle easier, or they are designed to prevent those connections. Some provinces and states have access to information laws that let the adoptee look for birth parents, while some make that process very difficult. Current laws on adoption information sources are available on the Internet where the information on laws is listed by state and province. Or information can be found by writing to adoption reunion sources, some of which are listed at the back of this book.
The 1996 law in British Columbia provides a reunion service and ensures that access to information is much easier, except where the birth parent or the adoptee register an objection. Adopted adults may apply for their original birth certificate with their original name. As well, a birth father registry now exists where the birth father can provide information for the adopted child. There is also a post-adoption openness registry. Another program, a reunification program within First Nations or Native American communities, tries to find the birth parents of First Nations adoptees. Services are supposed to make the adopted adult's search for information and identity much easier. In some areas restrictive laws become redundant when adopting parents and birth parents exchange information before the adoption placement. In the future searching agencies and government registries will not be necessary because there will be no secrecy surrounding adoption.
Adoptive parents and birth parents are now more likely to feel the need to be open with and willing to celebrate the differences between them than in the past. Today, more and more adoptions involve a meeting between both sets of parents before the child is placed. If it occurs privately, the information exchanged is not subject to any provincial or state regulation. The agency may not arrange such a meeting, but may be willing to co-operate after the meeting has taken place. Perhaps the next generation of adopted children won't worry about their origins; they'll know who they are. More and more people now know that adopted children need to have their history and that the world will not hiccup and stagger off its path because they find their original parents.
Like Barry, most teens I interviewed were critical of social workers, so I called social workers to ask them what they were doing out there. What was causing so much hostility? I knew that obtaining birth information was the main frustration, so I asked workers in agencies from coast to coast about their policies and the rationale behind them.
Social workers in the planning departments of legislatures were desperately anxious to be effective, compassionate, and to act in the “best interest of the child.” I was impressed by their intelligence, competence, and caring attitudes. For the most part they were supervisors of family services and probably not the workers teens would meet in the office. However, they were responsible for those workers and, in many cases, interpreted the policies for the social workers in the local offices. They were surrounded by legislation, public opinion, and individual lobbying, which made it difficult to respond with simple, compassionate solutions. It isn't possible to give out information if the legislature and government policies forbid it.
It was just as frustrating for some social workers to be prevented from acting in a simple, reasonable way as it is for teens to be denied their backgrounds. As with all laws, the ones that cause us a personal injustice are unfair, and anyone who obeys such unfair laws seems to be colluding with injustice. Social workers are aware of this attitude. Their only alternative is to ignore the law, betray their employer, and leave themselves open for lawsuits and breach of trust actions. It is not much of a choice.
Many teens had a poor opinion of the social welfare system. Dora said, “I don't trust social welfare. Social workers don't help. If my child had to go through what I did, I couldn't handle the guilt.”
Rhea's birth mother told her, “I made a contract with social welfare to place you in a good home. When it didn't work out, why didn't they get in touch with me? They broke their contract. Why didn't they come back and ask me if I could help you?”
The system, while providing a chance at a good home, avoided telling the truth in a great conspiracy of information suppression. Teens also thought that the needs of the birth mother were ignored. Rhea didn't see why the birth mother couldn't have a periodic progress report from the adoptive parents on how her child was doing. As with most other adopted teens who were skeptical of the system, Dora was sure that a letter from the adoptive parents, given to social welfare and passed on to the birth mother, stood a good chance of never arriving.
Although many teens thought that their birth mothers had a right to information about their well-being, they didn't feel they had any right to contact them or interfere in their lives. They wanted the choice of whether to meet birth parents to be their own decision.
The Reunion Registry of Canada compiles statistics on those who are seeking information about adoption. At the time I checked, seventy-five percent were adopted children seeking information and only twenty-five percent were birth parents. So while teens see birth parents as having the right to knowledge about them, large numbers of them aren't asking. But we can't assume that birth mothers don't want to know their child. One told me, “When I signed the papers, I promised I wouldn't look.” In trying to live up to her obligations, she didn't search.
Teens told me that the adoption-welfare system was “lousy.” In some cases this was resentment about controlling and withholding information, and in others, it was an attitude that was the result of personal experience.
“The social worker put me in twelve foster homes before I was eight months old. I mean, what kind of a social worker would do that?” When I asked why she had so many homes, Karen said, “I don't know. You wouldn't get a straight answer from a social worker. Social workers are government. They say anything to cover themselves up.”
Dora also was critical of the welfare system. “The way welfare works, you have a one-in-thirty chance of turning out okay if they're looking after you.” Although Dora had some good experiences with social workers, her most recent experience had not been happy.
Bill was twenty-two years old, about five-feet ten-inches, dark, quiet, almost shy. He had a life-time of frustration with social workers. We met over lunch and spent an hour talking about his life. He told me that he had never talked to anyone the way he was talking this day. I thought he might be Native Indian, perhaps part Chinese. He didn't know. His ignorance of his racial history was part of his problem.
Bill was in six or eight foster homes before he was six years old, then in an orphanage (he thinks). At eight he was placed for adoption. Apprehended by the court at from his adoptive parents' home age twelve, he then lived in several different group homes until he was nineteen. His adoptive parents had no history on him. The social workers told him they gave his history to his adoptive parents and now have no records. This is unusual. Copies are usually kept in the welfare office. Bill isn't sure where he was born, or even whether he is Canadian or American.
Although he was only with his adoptive parents for four years, he spoke of them as his parents and of his adoptive brother and sisters as his siblings. But he had only legal ties to his adoptive parents, brother, and sisters. He wanted to find his birth parents, not so much to establish a relationship as to establish a solid background for himself. He was afraid to develop any kind of relationship with anyone because he had suffered so much rejection. He knew this fear was a problem, but he didn't know how to handle it.
Bill trained as a cook and was working in a restaurant, and had ambitions to work in an even better restaurant. He has another ambition; some day, he would like to know who he is.
“I remember meeting my [adoptive] parents when I was about eight at the fountain. It must have been Vancouver, because I remember the Planetarium. I was apprehended from them by welfare when I was twelve. I remember going to court and sitting there from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon. No one told me what was happening. They just told me to be quiet and do as they said. They did tell me that my parents were charging me with ‘unmanageability’. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. But the social worker told me to keep quiet and just not say anything so they could get me out of that home. She said if I tried to tell anyone that I hadn't done anything they'd put me back with my parents, and I didn't want that.” As a legal child of his adoptive parents, Bill could not have simply been returned to the social worker. He had to be apprehended or taken into custody in this case as a delinquent.
“I talked to my best friend later. His father, a policeman, thought my parents were treating me so bad that he reported them to welfare and that's why the welfare tried to help me. When I was older, I tried to get my background information and the social workers said they didn't have it. They have no records of me before I was eight. So they said. It's like it's okay with them; I didn't exist until I was eight.
“They put me in a couple of group homes and they were okay, but I never knew I was leaving a place until the day I had to go. Always on the day. I never had any warning. And they never did any followup. I saw my social worker once in the first year I was away from my parents. And then no social worker for three years. Any help I got, I got from the secretaries at the welfare office. Not from any social worker. No one talked to me.
“No one cared until I got a good group home. I had a really good group home from when I was fifteen to when I was nineteen—just great. Except for those group home parents, the social system has left me in a bad situation. I'm supposed to have dual citizenship because I was born in the States. I've lived in Canada since I was eight but, because my parents won't give me any information and because the social workers say they don't have any, I can't get Canadian citizenship. I've been here since I was at least eight! It's like I didn't really exist. I had the R.C.M.R try to find out information and the Canadian Armed Forces try. I'm in the Reserve. They wouldn't let me into the active service because I couldn't prove my citizenship. But they just get a blank before I was eight.
“Everyone's pretending that before I was adopted at age eight, I just wasn't anywhere. I've tried to find out, but no one gave a damn and that's the truth.”
Bill's need to know his origins was so reasonable and compelling that it is a huge injustice that society's rules deny him his information.
Some social workers have ethical problems when teens ask for information. They usually understand the teen's need to know, but have difficulty justifying the release of information because of conflicting loyalties to and past commitments of the agency. “We made a con-tract with birth parents and adopting parents eighteen years ago,” one social worker told me. “We promised at that time not to reveal any identifying information. If we reveal the names now, we are breaking that contract and that's not ethical—no matter how much the child involved wants to know.” This is a one point of view that keeps names and identifying information securely locked in the social workers' files. And it is a good point.
But this causes concern for some social workers. “Now, we {in Nova Scotia] try to get a letter from the birth mother and from the adopting parents authorizing us to reveal the name to the child, should that child ask for it in the future. We don't give the identifying information at birth, but we get a consent to release the information if asked by the child. That way we can actively search in later years if the child wants us to. We might not do that. The social worker would have to assess the situation and do the best thing for that time, but we will have more options than we have now.” The information would still be released at the discretion of the social worker and would not automatically be given to the adopted child. But if the birth mother gave permission when the child was born, the social worker may be able to help when that child searches. “Adoptive parents and birth mothers could write in and change their consent to this information being released and we would have to respect that.”
So, in spite of the very caring attitude that I felt from many social workers, the information they hold about searching adults who were adopted is controlled by the law of the state or province, and they will not release it.
In many cases the law causes a moral dilemma for the social worker. One worker from the Yukon Territory thought that the birth information belonged to the child, not to the welfare department, but she could not release the information to the child because the law would not allow her to. The Yukon had a passive registry at the time that held the birth mother's name if she had submitted it, and the child's information if he had submitted it. The social worker, in spite of her personal feeling that the child had the right to the information, had to keep the information secret until both parties agreed to share it. Now a birth mother can write to the social welfare department giving permission to release information to her child. As birth mothers become more aware of the problems their children are having trying to get information, perhaps more will write their permission.
The Northwest Territories of Canada is a land of vast tundra, awesome skies, and a society that reflects that space and freedom. It has a unique and practical adoption system.
When interviewing a worker in the Department of Social Services in Yellowknife, N.W.T., I asked her if children had difficulty in getting information about their birth parents. “Not really,” she said. “We have a big area, but we don't have a lot of people up here and everyone either knows everybody or they can get to know them. Kids can find their parents if they want to. I've worked here for nineteen years and in this department for five-and-a-half, and it's only in the last year or so that I've been getting inquiries about birth information. I don't get many inquiries from teenagers who are searching, but if they have the permission of their adoptive parents, I help them. We don't have any legislation or any policies up here to prevent me from helping them. And it's really … “ she hesitated, “it's really no big deal—no big secret. What's the matter down there? Do you have some kind of prejudice against adoption?”
She sounded so easy-going and reasonable that I wondered for a moment if we crazy southerners weren't making a big problem out of a simple matter. I asked her to tell me more about adoption procedures in the Territories.
“We have three different kinds of adoption. We have the department adoption which requires a medical, a waiting period, home studies, and then all that paperwork after placement. We have very few children that come into our care that way, so we don't have many adoptions processed. Then we have private adoptions. Most adoptions are done that way. Usually a child is given to a family by a mother who lives in the same community. The department worker does a home study and after six months, the adoptive parents make arrangements with a lawyer to process the adoption legally.
“The third way is the native-custom adoption which is pre-arranged with the mother. There is no six-month probationary period. The adoption goes through when the baby is placed in the home. Three documents are signed and the child becomes a child of that family by order. This is done sometimes when families exchange children, that is, a family with four girls and a family with four boys might exchange a child. While this is often workable, young mothers are sometimes pressured into giving up their child to a family they don't really approve of—like a pensioner couple. But it's fast and convenient and doesn't cost any lawyer's fees and it usually works out all right.”
I asked her about the teenagers' need to search for their birth parents. “The only problems of identity that seem to come up are with the children who have been sent south. We didn't send many children south, but those who went sometimes come back to look at their old home. We try to keep all our children in the Territories.”
“Do you have a policy of placing a child only with a family of his own race?” I asked.
“Well, now we don't have a real problem there either. The department has so few children to place that we try to get the best home for the child and that includes looking at his face. Most of the private adoptions involve relatives or people in the same community, so it's approved of by the community, more-or-less. The adopting parents approach the mother and ask her for the child. If she likes the home she'll put her baby there. It seems to work out pretty well.”
I was impressed with the community solution to finding good homes for children—not a lot of official guidance, very little bureaucratic interference—just a community acceptance of parents' need for children and children's need for families.
“And because everyone knows who had the baby, it isn't hard for the child to find his natural parents if he wants to. I helped a sixteen-year-old girl last week find her natural mother. Her adoptive mother thought it would be a good idea, so she asked me to do it.”
“How long did it take you?” I asked.
“Twenty-four hours.”
It seemed ideal. I tried to imagine the social situation in New York State or Ontario if those governments implemented the adoption system of the Northwest Territories.
In many places there seems to be an attitude that the social worker must protect society from itself; that all parties to the adoption—the child, birth mother, birth father, adopting parents—must be organized and regulated by a social worker; that the parties involved could never reach a good decision without the professional advice of the adoption agency and its workers. In contrast, the attitude in the Northwest Territories seems to be that, if left alone with a minimum of interference, communities muddle through to a reasonably happy solution.
In many provinces and states, it is the policy of the welfare agencies that a child born in one city must be placed in another. If we changed that policy to approach that of the Northwest Territories, we might place a child in the community or city into which he was born. This would encourage more open adoption, similar to the policies of many aboriginal communities, and perhaps a more relaxed, reasonable attitude toward the child's beginnings.
In one sense, the intentions of lawmakers, social workers, and many adoptive parents to protect the child is wonderful. They are concerned that adopted children be given every chance to truly be a child of their new family. But the teens I interviewed didn't see the need for great secrecy. Adoption wasn't a social stigma, something to be hidden. The teens didn't view it as a problem. No one had been treated badly because they had been adopted and, except for incidences in junior high school, no one had encountered prejudice. Being adopted was not a social issue, although it may be a personal emotional one.
Some teens felt that they had been invited to the party of life holding a different colour invitation from everyone else; that they were only a temporary guest in life; that they might be asked to leave at any moment. This lack of background information, instead of unifying families, as the lawmakers and social workers had once predicted, caused feelings of alienation within families. In cases where adoptive parents helped their children find information about their origins, the teens felt closer to their parents—understood, loved, and appreciated. They felt their individuality was respected and accepted.
Barry didn't think that finding information about his back-ground was important to anyone but himself. “I want to know about my background so I'm doing my own search. When you decide that you're going to search you have to be prepared to live with whatever you find. If you aren't ready to accept what you find, I don't think you should bother to search. You will have to accept the good or the bad, whichever way it turns out to be. After I find them I don't intend to change. I'm happy. I'm satisfied. I just want to know who they are.”
Few teens knew the names of their birth parents. It may be that within ten years, most teens will have this information. In some provinces and states the names of the birth parents are given to the adoptive parents at the time of placement; in some areas the names are still kept secret. If teens have their birth name, finding birth parents may be easy. But most start with little or no information, so it takes ingenuity and persistence to trace their past.
Many provinces and states now have a birth registry. These differ one from another. Some are passive registries in which both the birth parents and the adoptee must register and are then “matched.” Some registries are active, in which case, either the birth relatives or the adoptee may ask the agency to search for the other party. Some are “semi-active,” in which case only the adult adoptee is helped in a search and the birth relatives will not be assisted. Some registries have so many applications for searches and so few staff members that they are seven to ten years behind in their work.
Some have registries for fathers; some allow family members to look. Some have veto provisions, which means that either birth parents or adoptees can refuse to allow contact or information to be released. And some provide that all identifying information that has been left with the agency will be given to the adoptee when he or she turns eighteen.
To be included on the registry, an adopted child must be an adult (usually eighteen, but some registries ask for adoptive parents' consent at eighteen and adoptees must wait until they are twenty-one without it). Searchers can write to their state or provincial government for information, or they can click onto the “Current Open Records Bills” on the Internet for up-to-date advice. Countries such as Great Britain, Israel, and Finland allow free access to the records to adopted adults. Since the records have become available in Britain, only a small percentage of adopted adults have looked up their backgrounds.
Laws change. Searchers might find information easier to access this year than last. Still, there is always the fear that information will be become more difficult to attain because of a backlash in some areas (the anti-open adoption movement in New Jersey, for instance).
There are many private registries that serve the adopted adult's need to find information. They offer advice and moral support, and suggest searching techniques. The Canadian Reunion Registry accepts names from all who wish to search. Again, searchers must be eighteen or their adopted parents must act for them. Those who wish to register must send their name, address, birth date, birth place, and time they were born. The registry fills out a card to keep on file awaiting the birth parent's information. The Reunion Registry ties into the American International Soundex Reunion Registry, which accepts searchers at eighteen years of age.
Registries on the Internet are organized according to province and state, and there is a World Wide Registry. Private registries started by interested searchers will often accept the adopted child's information, put it in a holding file, and ask them to wait until they reach eighteen. At the same time, they may offer advice and help. If an adoptee isn't comfortable with the first agency, he or she should not give up but try another. If adoptive parents apply on their child's behalf, some agencies will start a search.
There are several magazines devoted to the problems of adoptees. As well, the Web lists many searching agencies; some are volunteer, non-profit organizations; others are private, detective-like inquiry agents. With the opening of the adoption laws, it is less likely now that children or birth parents will have to hire a private detective to find each other. Many people find what they need to know from state or provincial records, or from reunion registries. If that does not get results, they can consult adoption reunion agencies.
My oldest son is not interested in searching for his birth parents. Every time I decide that he ought to search, and perhaps I should start the search for him, I remind myself that he is an adult, has told me that he doesn't want to search, and works as a private investigator for a living. If he wanted to find his birth parents, he could check all the sources I know about, and probably some I don't. It is important for adoptive parents to be open and helpful; it is also important for them to respect their child's opinions and desires.
A particular cultural background may be an advantage in searching, because sometimes cultural organizations keep records and may be able to help. Native Americans and First Nations people of Canada may have additional assistance because some nations have their own reunification departments which help people with a Native heritage.
The first place to start searching is at home. Adoptees should talk to their adoptive parents. They are the best source of information, often recalling facts that can be important leads in the search. They may remember bits of information the social worker gave them many years ago, or have a letter or a report filed away. Co-operative adoptive parents can be a great source of support and help. Often parents can find information quickly, and the process of looking for birth parents can bring adopted children and their adoptive parents closer together.
Leslie started looking for her birth mother when she was seventeen. “For me, it was hard because my parents were not supportive. My mother is very insecure. But she should have been a little more secure to know that, after nineteen years of her being my mother, I wasn't going to run off with someone who was . . . like a perfect stranger. She should have been supportive, but fear overcomes love there. Because they {my parents] were more afraid that I was going to find them [my birth parents] and want to go back there. I don't know why. But I suppose if I was a parent I would have that attitude, too.
“I couldn't talk to my mother because she got very upset . . . to the point she would phone me and somehow we would get into it and she would cry on the phone. All I wanted to do was know. And I'd gotten mad at her a few times because it had got to the point that it annoyed me that she would be that insecure. ‘You're my mother. You're my father, that's all there is to it.' It's just that I want to know who they {birth parents] are; why they gave me away; what the circumstances were. My mom just had a really hard time handling it. Parents are better off supporting the child and helping her through it. Like a child is better off if she goes somewhere to meet her {birth] mother and her mother tells her, ‘Well, I got pregnant and I was a hooker and I didn't want you.' Then you're better off to have your {adoptive] mother there to cry on.”
Searching for a birth parent can be a time-consuming, frustrating process. If you have decided to search for your background, and you know your birth name, you might try to find information in the following ways. This information was obtained from the secretary of the Canadian Reunion Registry years ago, from adoptees who had successfully searched, and recently from the Internet.
1. Check the Internet. There are many different sites for you to search, most without fees. Type in “adoptee search” in the space in your search engine, and just keep hunting. I have heard that there are unscrupulous people who prey on your need to know and try to work on your emotions to extract money from you. The Internet is both wonderful and awful. Be careful about who gets your name and address, and check out the information you receive.
2. Check telephone directories (old telephone books in library stacks.) Look for a father or brother of your birth mother. Male relatives are less likely to change their last names.
3. Check city directories showing residence, occupation, and full name. Main branches of libraries and archives may keep directories going back to 1900. Check others at the same address and note names of neighbours for possible contact. Some museums keep geneology lists.
4. Try to trace your birth parents through their past. Look for obituaries that name closes relatives such as, “Mr. John Smith is survived by his daughter Rose.” Obtain a copy of your grandparents' death certificates from Vital Statistics, and copies of all papers filed with Probate from Surrogate Court. In some provinces this is called Probate Registry to the Supreme Court. In your state you may get your ancestors' names from the State Department of Vital Statistics. This will tell you in what county your ancestor died. Then apply to the County Superior Court for information on Probate.
5. In Canada, write to Public Archives, Geneology Division, 395 Wellington St., Ottawa, Ontario. In the U.S., write to Geneology Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 50 East N. Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84150. This registry may also be available in your local library or centre for geneology research.
6. Look for church marriage records.
7. Try the voters' lists which may be kept at city hall.
8. Check automobile registrations if that is possible in your province or state.
9. Talk to bill collectors.
10. Try relatives no matter how distant. Pretend you are researching family geneology. The word “adoption” can close off information.
11. If you find a document, try talking to all the people whose names appear on the document, including witnesses or an attending priest or minister.
12. Search for employers that your birth parents may have had.
13. If they were in unionized employment, ask the union to check their records. If they graduated from high school or university, check school records. These may give you their former address or even a picture.
14. Hospital records. Some hospitals destroy their records. Others may need a “waiver of confidentiality” from an adoption agency or government department.
15. Check the newspaper: information wanted, missing persons, personal, anniversary, obituaries, marriages.
16. Check old newspapers for marriages, births, and deaths.
17. Persevere.
The most useful piece of information searchers can have to begin with is their birth name. A name somehow makes the adoptee and the birth mother more real. If adoptees don't have their name, they need as much other information as they can get. They need to find out where they were born—city, state or province, and hospital; their birth date, weight, and information such as the name of the attending doctor and nurse. Adoptees also need to know the city, state or province in which they were adpoted; what agency placed them and when; and the date the adoption was completed. Sometimes, after a meticulous and systematic search, critical information will arise serendipitously, from a chance meeting or an overheard conversation.
At a meeting of health workers in the area where my youngest son's birth grandparents had lived twenty-five years earlier, I talked to a health nurse from his Native nation who knew everyone in the community. After one brief meeting and an exchange of letters, she and I became the bridge that allowed my son and his birth mother to connect. Serendipity does happen.
With the Internet and other fast communication systems, and with the more open attitude toward adoption, adoptees will find the search much easier than the tedious and difficult paths of the past. Adoptees need to talk to other adoptees about their searches, to sup-port groups and, if at all possible, to their adoptive parents. It is important to be prepared for the feelings that come with either rejection or reunion. Both can be overwhelming.
If searchers have only non-identifying information, they may find something in that information that can be traced. It is necessary to become a detective—questioning, prying, snooping, perhaps even lying a little—to explore each clue, follow every possible loose thread. They may find some indication of what school their birth parents attended, awards they might have won, employment they or their parents might have had. Social workers sometimes get tired of blocking out the names in the non-identifying information near the end of a report. Partially erased names and other half blacked-out words can provide clues.
Some people see the search as an intense emotional journey, others as an intellectual challenge. “With the odds against me, the world against me, I'll win,” Barry said. “It's like my theme song is ‘Never Surrender’.”
Rhea, at seventeen, had searched alone, finding her birth mother by putting together all the information she could. “I knew she had been a teacher, that she was blonde, five-foot-six inches, blue eyes. I didn't know where she lived, but I knew she had grade thirteen in Ontario. I had my last name narrowed down to five names. I found that out by snatching glances at the records as the social workers pulled them out.”
Leslie, in her search, had honed her detective skills quite well. “The name of the town my birth mother lived in was on the adoption form. I figured it was a small town and there must be somebody there who knew what was going on. I wrote to the church. The minister might know. He might tell me a lot about her without telling me her name. I didn't have to know who she was. I just needed to know more about her. I thought so, anyway. I wrote to the Children's Aid Society there. They've got two of them. I wrote to the hospital and I wrote to the library checking for birth announcements from that date [Leslie's birthday].
“And what happened was that the lady in the library knew the family, knew that there was another child out there, and she forwarded my letter to one of my sisters who still lived out there. And my sister answered the letter, not letting on for a minute that she knew who I was or that she knew that she was my sister. She just asked me what I wanted to know and I wrote back and told her. I didn't care if they had a million bucks. All I wanted was to know. I wasn't in it for the money.
“And the hospital made the mistake of writing back and telling me. They aren't supposed to disclose that kind of information, but they wrote back and they told me that there was a child born to Mary Smith and she named me after herself. And they made the mistake of telling me. Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing. Or maybe she [birth mother] put it in there that if anyone ever did inquire they were allowed to give it out.”
Some teens feared that if they started to search for their birth parents, they might receive an unexpected and unwanted visit from a birth mother or father. It is the policy of searching agencies not to allow unscheduled meetings between parties, but it sometimes happens. Adopted children are supposed to be asked if they want a meeting, but occasionally mistakes are made and a birth mother bypasses an agency and makes direct contact. This is rare, but possible.
Joining a group can give an adoptee a sense of acceptance. The others in the group will see the searcher's needs as reasonable and normal. Others who are experienced searchers may offer advice and help. Most organizations will not actively assist a search for birth parents, but they will provide information and advice on how to deal with difficulties.
While a group of searchers can be a great support, the members of the group are diverse. No one will have identical problems. People with different ideas and different needs join the group, but since they have a common goal, they are usually willing to provide information and understanding.
Each adopted person must decide what it is they need to discover and how important it is to them. Many adopted teens at about fifteen or sixteen are working through feelings of independence and have difficulty with their adoptive parents, particularly mothers. At times they think that all their problems would be solved if they could only meet their birth parents, that they could be magically freed from the task of working things out with their adoptive parents. They imagine that they would be loved and understood, instinctively accepted by “real” parents.
But, of course, there aren't any magical ways of working out a relationship. Relationships take time and effort. Everyone must work at it, adopted or not. Dealing with relationships, solving the problem of parental authority in the move toward independence, are the usual tasks of teen life. This must not be confused with searching for original history in an effort to establish identity.
Teens who are not adopted sometimes “adopt” another set of parents during this turbulent time. They tell their own parents nothing and tell their friends' parents everything. I've often wondered if it wouldn't be wise to trade fifteen-year-olds around the neighbourhood. My child would go to the neighbour's and her kid would come to live at my house. Some teens told me that they stayed with aunts or neighbours for a while, so perhaps to some extent, this is already happening.
Most searching agencies understand this painful growing period and will advise teens to wait until they are eighteen. By then, they will have resolved most of their problems of independence, and some of the problems of identity, and will be ready and strong enough to take on new relationships.
Debbie told me very firmly, “I'm sixteen. I have a set of parents [adoptive]. I have foster parents, a sister, and two brothers. I have a foster sister and brother, a boy friend, school, and a job. I don't have time for any more relationships.”
Not all teens wanted to search for their beginnings. Some just wanted to talk to someone about it, to work out their feelings, get their ideas clear. Professional counsellors may be helpful: school counsellors, ministers, social workers. A friendly aunt or uncle, an older brother or sister—sometimes a neighbour might be easy to talk to, listen well, and give good advice Sometimes all that is needed to assuage the curiosity teens have about their past is to talk about it.
How many parents do adopted children have? Most teens only wanted to know who their birth parents were and perhaps meet them, not move them into a parental position. They already had parents who filled the mother and father spots in their hearts and they didn't want those parents moved—even slightly—from that central position.
“I don't want another mother,” Sue-ann said. “She [her adoptive mother] doesn't understand about my wanting to search, but she loves me. I don't doubt it for a moment and I don't want to hurt her.”
Some teens had concerns that, if they searched for birth parents, they might be abandoned by their adoptive parents the way they had been abandoned at birth. No matter how people talked about “relinquishment,” “giving up,” “making a birth plan,” and “placing you in a loving home,” some teens still felt they had been abandoned. They didn't want to risk that again.
Teens often dealt with these feelings successfully by organizing their lives so that they knew where their parents and loved ones were at all times and what to expect day by day. They were reassured by the consistent patterns and predictable reliability of their loved ones.
Some adoptive parents are casual and think teens should be able to adjust to changes in plans and unexpected revisions in time schedules. “I can't always be on time,” they say. Such parents think detailed planning is too rigid, and too difficult to follow. “Lighten up,” they say. Adopted teens might find this attitude very hard to live with.
Parents may need to understand the importance of predictability and control in their adopted child's life. If teens find loss and rejection almost overwhelming, a predictable time schedule helps. At some time in their lives, they will have to deal with the need for regulation and consistency, which is due to fears of abandonment, but their feelings are not unusual. Many people create rigid schedules and a predictable lifestyle for themselves. It is a coping mechanism that often works.
If adoptive parents divorce, teens may feel the loss of a parent even more deeply than a teen who has not been adopted. At that time the emotions of abandonment at birth may resurface as well as the rational concerns of all teens such as: “Will I ever see Dad again?” (Or Mom, if it is the mother who has left the house.) “Will I be able to call him?” “Will I still be his kid?”
Teens have friends with divorced parents where one of those parents stops calling and visiting with the child—where the parent simply disengages. The threat of that kind of loss could cause emotional panic in the adopted teen.
At the time of a divorce or when teens fear abandonment, it helps them to talk to someone, preferably someone from an adoption agency such as Adoptive Families Association, who will understand their strong concerns about losing a parent. If the teen is from an distinctive ethnic culture, he or she might find a counsellor at their cultural centre, such as a First Nations Healing Centre or an Indian Friendship Centre.
Divorce is a loss in the life of a teen, and while loss and abandonment are often difficult for adopted teens, life is full of loss. It is part of the human condition to love and lose. Adopted teens will, in time, learn how to deal with the losses of their lives. It usually helps enormously to deal with the first loss, to get an explanation of why they were relinquished for adoption and connect with their birth mother. This meeting, this reunion, makes their past concrete and so makes them feel more real. They had been dancing on shifting sand for years, and want to stomp their feet on firm ground, shouting, “This is my part of the world. These are my roots. This is my mother.”
Those feelings don't match their intellectual appraisal of the situation. This birth mother is their mother—sort of. This birth family is their family—sort of. Intellectually they can slot their birth parents into the past, but emotionally they need them in the present.
Finding a birth mother is not like meeting an aunt or a cousin who had been away for years. Meeting a birth mother is like meeting yourself, a kind of doppelganger, a self-ghost. It can be shocking and very disturbing. It touches at the pit of anger and depression buried deep within. If the birth mother is friendly and supportive, teens may still hate her for giving them up: “Why me?” “What was wrong with me?” The mind knows that she was eighteen, poor, possibly in an abusive home, and that for the child's safety and a better future, she gave it to adoptive parents. But the heart doesn't always take direction from the mind, and teens may feel betrayed, angry, and confused.
If teens understand that their feelings of loss may have come from their first separation from their birth mother, they must acknowledge that powerful feelings are at work inside them and not underestimate the effects of a reunion. Teens may decide that they are not emotionally ready to deal with a reunion with their birth mother. If they are trying to cope with an addiction, another big loss in their life, or an abusive relationship, they may need to leave the task of reunion to another time.
As in the other areas of life, if teens explain to those who love them what their fears and concerns are and let them know what help they need, they are far more likely to get it than if they act out their feelings in anger or a self-destructive lifestyle. Most parents aren't psychologists; they are more likely to respond to their teen's actions rather than their feelings unless teens find a way to tell their parents why they are upset. A counsellor can help make this clear to parents.
If teens find their birth mother and are rejected, their emotional responses are more than doubled. The feelings of rejection are com-pounded. They must realize that it wasn't their fault that their mother couldn't keep them at birth, and it isn't their fault she can't accept them now. She is probably dealing with problems in her own life that make it hard for her to accept any child at this time. Still, rejection, for any reason, is extremely difficult to take.
Birth mothers find themselves in an emotional situation where there are few roadmaps or protocols for behaviour. The reunion is a situation without guidelines for the adopted child and the adoptive parents. As well as reading books written about the process, counselling can be very useful at this time, helping everyone to cope with the ramifications of the meeting.
Once teens find their birth parents, how do they fit them into their lives? This depends on their present family situation, on the feelings their birth mother (or father) has for them, and on their experience with their adoptive parents. If their parents are divorced, they may have a stepmother and already have experience with several mothers or fathers.
I remember walking through the village of Arctic Bay in Northern Baffin Island and being introduced to an old woman by my friend, Meena, who said, “This is my grandmother.” After we left the woman, Meena said, “You understand that I have many grandmothers who are not related by birth?” Any woman who loved her was a “grandmother.” Teens may have grandmothers and mothers of affection in their lives and know how to make room for many kinds of relation-ships. There are many different ways of incorporating people into their lives; they need to think about how they can make room for their birth mother. If teens have grown up in an open adoption where they have always known their birth mother, including her will likely not be a problem.
When adopted teens meet their birth mother or talk to her on the phone for the first time, it's a good idea for them to take time to think about the encounter before they meet again. “Take it slow” is the best advice. Teens need time to adjust, and birth mothers do as well.
Teens want to feel in control of whether they meet and how often; they need to feel in charge of the meetings. They want to be very sure they can retreat from the involvement with their birth mother if they find it too stressful.
Rachelle had known her birth mother for six years and her birth father for two. At the cafe where I met her for lunch, she told me that she had numerous parents, but none of them willing to accept her. She had an adoptive mother, an adoptive father, an Aunt Louise, a birth mother, a birth father, a best girlfriend, and her girlfriend's family. As well, she had to cope with social workers and her employer. Her relationships were intricate and complicated.
Her birth mother, Suzanne, was not a stranger to her family. She was the sister of Rachelle's adoptive mother.
Her adoptive mother Ella, sister to her birth mother Suzanne, does not have a simple, straight-forward family. She divorced Rachelle's adoptive father and married Jose. Jose, now Rachelle's stepfather, molested Rachelle, so she left to go live with her mother's other sister, her Aunt Louise, and her cousin Annie. Her adoptive mother was pregnant at this time. The baby will not have a simple relationship to Rachelle either, for she will be Rachelle's legal sister, but also her cousin.
Her Aunt Louise took Rachelle in and supported her. Her aunt's home was a stable one and Rachelle felt accepted there, but her birth mother Suzanne wanted Rachelle with her, was “jealous,” Rachelle says, and so she went to her birth mother's house. Rachelle had almost too many mothers.
Rachelle's birth mother was an alcoholic and a drug user and while emotional about Rachelle, she had not been supportive. Rachelle stayed with her birth mother for a few months, but the drug parties and lack of structure and food made it hard. Her mother kicked her out and told her not to go to any of the family. She told her sisters she was practising “tough love” on Rachelle, and not to take her in. This meant that, even with three mothers, she had no place to go.
Her birth father, John, was introduced to her when she was thirteen by her Aunt Louise. John was simply her birth father and not related to her in any other way. He had a wife and three children. His wife did not want Rachelle in her family. Her birth father was willing to give Rachelle money occasionally, but could not give her a home with his family.
Rachelle had an adoptive father who had left the family, a step-father who had abused her, and a biological father who lived apart from her. She had almost too many fathers, with none taking responsibility for her.
Rachelle called a social worker in December and told her that she had been kicked out by her mother and had no place to stay. The welfare agency said they'd call her back. She phoned several times without getting any help. It was now March, three months later, and they had never called her or concerned themselves with where she was living.
At fifteen, Rachelle found a couple who needed a nanny for their baby. In return for babysitting they gave her a home and food. She had enrolled in high school correspondence courses and worked on them while she was child minding. She was doing well and plans to graduate with her class.
Knowing their birth mother does not necessarily create magical, supportive families for teens, as Rachelle's life attests. It helps to know her background, but she doesn't look for mothering from Suzanne. With four parents, three stepparents, an aunt, an adult friend, and the social agencies, Rachelle, at fifteen, had no one who took responsibility for her, although she had found some positive, supporting adults in her life. Her Aunt Louise and her cousin had managed to evade the family directive and gave her unconditional love and support. She had, she said, talked about her feelings and expectations of all her parents, and has dealt with her anger about her life. Her family relationships are complicated and difficult, but she is determined to make a good life for herself, and she will manage.
Rachelle was an amazing young woman who had worked through many of her issues around loss and rejection as she struggled for her own place in the world. Meeting her birth father was very important to her. He was a stable, reliable man in his own second family and, although he couldn't bring Rachelle into that family, he maintained contact and gave her some financial support as her right as one of his children.
Once teens know who their birth father is, they need to decide whether they want contact with him. If they resent him for leaving their birth mother without support, they may feel too angry to meet him. If they think that, “Hey, they were both young and in trouble,” and can understand that, they might contact him. It may be that their conception was the result of rape or incest. That situation is very difficult for children to accept, and they will need to talk it over with a trusted adult. But once teens have worked through their hurt and anger in what is often a complicated process, there is no reason why they can't be successful and happy.
Teens need to decide what they want to know from their birth parents. Usually two or three meetings are necessary before they feel comfortable enough to ask why they were given up, what their medical history is, and who the other family members are.
Sometimes there are family members who didn't know about the teen's birth. The sudden appearance of a sixteen-year-old might come as a big surprise. There may be a warm response from the bio-logical brothers and sisters. Uncles may call and invite them to family celebrations. Grandparents may ask for a visit. Teens need to decide how much contact they want with birth family members. If they are lucky, their problem will be one of deciding who to visit first.
If they are not so lucky, they may find that the relatives of their birth parents don't want to know them and aren't interested in seeing them. Teens may be limited to getting information from their birth parents with no contact at all with other relatives. This might be difficult to accept. It's unlikely that the family took one look at the teen and said, “We don't want anything to do with that one!” and more likely that there are current social and family problems that the appearance of the teen would complicate.
When teens look for their birth parents, their adoptive parents may not be supportive. In spite of all that has been written about the importance of adoptive parents helping their children to search for their birth parents, and about how helping adopted children search will bring them closer to adoptive parents, many are still afraid of the search. In fact, teens very often told me that their adoptive parents would be hurt by their search. Their parents would think, they said, that they wanted another set of parents. It is sometimes true that adoptive parents feel threatened by a child's possible reunion with the birth family.
Although not specifically stated, the fear that in the search for their birth parents they might risk losing the warm, supportive relationship they had with their adoptive parents might have been an underlying concern. Teens need to be clear about whether their adoptive parents really will be hurt and afraid of a search, or whether it is they themselves who are afraid.
I believe that all adoptive children should know their birth parents—at least their names, where they live, and what they do in their lives—and that adoptive parents should help their children find this information. That doesn't mean that teens should immediately start their search.
There may be good reasons not to search. Teens may believe it wiser to wait for a few years when they can search without involving their adoptive parents. They know their adoptive parents better than anyone else. A compulsion to search for a birth mother and the information she can give is perfectly normal and natural and usually doesn't threaten the relationship with adoptive parents, but perhaps the adoptive parent would be hurt and the teen knows this. An adopted child may eventually find the right time, when searching may be easier, and the energy to do so.
It is my hope that adopted teens realize that the uncertain feelings they have—that they are aliens on this planet, different, don't quite belong, will be abandoned without support—have been created by a system that takes a child from one mother and gives it to another while prohibiting contact between the mothers, and not because of any lack in the teens. Adopted teens have adjusted in the best way they could, responding like any normal, healthy baby or child would.
Our society, including everyone involved in the adoption process, but especially the teens themselves, needs to recognize and accept these feelings as normal in the circumstances. The effects of adoption begin before birth and last throughout life. Adopted teens must work to prevent the fears and uncertainties about their adoption from overpowering their lives.