Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / September 2008

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2008/0916/1221430249383.html

'Giving up a child for adoption has a lifetime impact'
Stories of adoption that need to be heard

A woman relieved to discover her son had turned out well after
adoption: "In the late 1970s I had a child who was adopted - at a time
when 30 per cent of Irish children born outside marriage were adopted.

"While my experience of pregnancy and placement was much less
traumatic than your friend's, the fact that I had a child who was
adopted was difficult to discuss with people until comparatively
recently. I always wondered about how my child was progressing and
what was happening to him, and knew very little until I contacted the
relevant adoption society after my child had reached the age of 21. It
provided me with non-identifying information and told the adoptive
family that I had been in contact. The mother sent me some
photographs, which were terrific. Since then I have had the
opportunity to see for myself that my son is a lovely lad and turned
out very well.

"Giving up a child for adoption has a lifetime impact. One of the
things which I've found helpful to remember is that what we did was
the most generous act anyone could undertake. Some adoptive families
always toast their child's mother at Christmas and birthdays as a
gesture of appreciation and recognition.

"Should your friend decide to discuss the adoption now with her adult
children and husband, I'm sure that they will fully appreciate how
radically things have changed in Ireland over the last 30 to 40 years
and that she took a very brave and loving decision, which was in the
best interest of her child in the prevailing circumstance. Of course
what she did does not make her unmotherly! Your friend's adult
children will know what a loving mother she has been to them for many
years."

"My child's father didn't want to know and still doesn't - I see him
in the supermarket"

A woman who gave up her son 30 years ago : "I had to keep my first
pregnancy secret because my father was a very important person in the
community and my child's father was the son of my father's best
friend. To this day, neither of these men know that they became
grandfathers when my first child was born.

"My child's father didn't want to know and still doesn't - I often see
him in the supermarket on Saturday mornings, and he walks right by
me. . . I think that men who get women pregnant, then deny it and walk
away, should have a permanent tattoo on their foreheads that says: 'I
fertilised an egg and I didn't take responsibility!'

"I'm not angry and bitter. You have to see the positives of adoption
for women of my generation and not get into Irish martyrdom. Adoption
was the answer to a problem at the time. I was 19 years old and I
stayed in hospital, breastfeeding my baby for a week until the social
worker took my child, put it in a Moses basket on the back seat of her
car and drove off. I went home alone to my apartment in London and
breathed a sigh of relief. There was no way a single mother could
survive then with a small baby and still hold down a job. Adoption was
a solution. Nobody died. It wasn't an abortion - the child lived. I
didn't bond with the child I gave away as I did with my other
children.

"It would be far worse to bond with a child only to see that child
die.

"Some birth mothers take the view of 'my life has been so awful'. My
view is: 'That's not what ruined your life.' Maybe you married the
wrong man afterwards or had other difficulties, but having given away
your baby isn't the reason you are unhappy now. Everybody gets a blow,
a wake-up call that makes them move from childhood to adulthood.
Everybody has an experience that forces them to become adults, and you
can't blame that experience for all your problems. You have to move
on.

"I'm afraid that birth mothers speaking about their pain would put off
young girls today from seeing adoption as a viable choice. There are
so many couples who can't have children, and I would love to see
adoption coming back in again. Abortion can be hard to live with and
women should have the choice to continue their pregnancies and have
their babies adopted if that is what's right for them.

"I would love to be a surrogate mother, having children for people who
can't have them, if I was still able - why is that any different than
giving your child up for adoption? I think it was the secrecy and
shame that caused us so much pain. A friend of mine was at a wedding
recently - a table of eight, four couples all in their 50s - and one
of the women got very drunk and said out of the blue: 'Before I was
married I had a baby and gave it away, and I don't give a damn what
any of you think!' Then two of the other women admitted that they too
had got pregnant and given babies away before they got married.
Imagine! Three out of four women at a table at a wedding had had that
experience. That was our generation in the 1970s.

"My firstborn has never come looking for me. I think that means he's
happy. I would never go looking for him, because you just have to
leave well enough alone.

"If there was anyone I'd like to meet, it would be the mother of the
other child that the couple who adopted my child also adopted. I was
told that she looked like me and was similar in social background and
personality. The social workers were very good at that - matching us
birth mothers with adoptive parents in terms of looks and personality
so that the children to be adopted would fit right in.

"A few years ago, I told my grown children that I had given birth to a
child and had the child adopted. One reason I told them was so that
one of my daughters wouldn't start dating her half-brother by mistake.

"For me, there was a sense of freedom. It's not as bad as telling your
children you have a terminal disease - and if my children can't accept
it, then too bad."

"Even though I have her number, I dare not telephone my birth mother"

A man adopted 40 years ago, who feels shunned by his birth family : "I
am an adopted person who has successfully made contact with his birth
mother but still finds himself in a limbo of secrecy. I was born and
adopted in 1956. Through the adoption society I contacted my mother in
2003 and we had one meeting in 2005, but since then there have been
only three phone calls, all motivated by her need to defend her
position of absolute secrecy.

"From our meeting in 2005, I got enough information to trace back into
the ancestry of both my parents, and I am very glad to have had that
opportunity. But now I have exhausted the genealogical escape lines.
After many hours spent in libraries, archives, presbyteries,
graveyards, etc, I have collected a folder of documents recording the
facts of my ancestors' lives, but I have no real access to my living
relatives. Even though I know where my mother lives, I may not visit
her. Even though I have her number, I dare not telephone her. This is
because she has never told her husband or her family. I am her secret.
I do not want to be, but I am.

"I have nothing to hide. I would be more than happy to be able to
announce to the world: 'I am this woman's son; this man was my
father.' But I cannot do so. For my mother's sake, I must remain
silent, invisible, non-existent.

"I am in many ways free, independent, comfortable, even privileged.
But because I continue to be my mother's secret, my sense of identity
remains muted. Some part of me - the essence or core that non-adopted
people may take for granted - is always suppressed.

"I have three grown-up children, each older than my mother was when
she found herself pregnant and fled to England to deal with her
crisis. Now I am the father of a five-year-old girl for whom this
grandmother just does not exist. I don't see that I have any choice
but to keep this information from my daughter, but it means that the
charade of secrecy continues . . . I am not just the object of
secrecy, but a participant in the process. Not only must I carry with
me someone's secret, I am that secret incarnate.

"What am I to do if my mother dies? Am I to appear after a decent
interval of mourning and reveal myself to her family? How would they
feel? Wouldn't it be better if she could bring herself to tell them
herself? Sometimes I think that people imagine that we live in
enlightened times - not so for people embroiled in the absurd secrecy
cycle of adoption. On one occasion, my mother spotted me in the
supermarket and she swung her trolley round and resurfaced at the
farthest corner of the shop.

"I very much support what your friend suggests, a forum for birth
mothers aged 60-plus to share their stories and support each other.
Life is too short to be taking all this to the grave."

"I used to hear women screaming . . . Was the same thing to happen to
me?"

A woman forced into adoption 40 years ago : "As a 16-year-old, I was
one of these girls in the 1960s. I was sent to what I thought was a
boarding school, with absolutely no idea that anything was wrong with
me. I was so naive that when I started to put on weight I believed
what I was told there, that I was eating too much. I used to hear
women screaming in the night, and the following morning these women
had been moved to another part of the building. What was I to think
but that they were doing something to them and they had disappeared?
Was the same thing to happen to me? There was no sign of babies to
give a hint, as the mothers were moved to another part of the building
with their babies and never the two would meet.

"Anyway, my turn came, and the screaming was in fact the birth of
babies, and now I discovered that this was the problem. My baby
daughter was born and died after a week or two. This death was not
once addressed with me, nor was there a funeral either.

"After I returned home - no baby, no death, nothing. My way of coping
was to push it away and get on with my life. However, this proved to
be impossible as I was constantly depressed and showing signs of
several illnesses for years. In the past 15 years I have been dealing
with this in therapy and have been reliving and releasing the pain and
suffering.

"Worse still, when I went about looking for records of my baby and
proof of my time there, I was about to be further pained to discover
that there was no record of me being there and no record of my ever
having had a baby. Can you imagine what this has done to me? I have
suffered many things but I can tell you that no pain compares to the
pain of a mother being separated from her child. This is the ultimate.
Nothing compares.

"The only proof I have that I was there is that one of the girls died
suddenly when I was there. She died of a blood-clot or something
similar. We were very aware of this and I can still see the hearse
driving down the avenue bringing her home to be buried. This is all I
have. The biggest part of all this is the denial and secrecy around
it. Secrets kill us, and mine gave me breast cancer eight years ago,
but thankfully I am still here to tell the tale.

"Your friend and her baby - I would like you to tell her that her
children would probably be her best support in this. Times have
changed and her children would be appalled at what she has carried.
I'm sure that her husband would be too."

"I am now in my 40s, but I don't think it goes away until it is dealt
with"

A woman who finds secrecy the most difficult aspect of being adopted :
"I am the child of an unmarried mother, and a father who was married
to somebody else. I don't like to go into detail in an e-mail, but, in
short, a very complicated route was taken to keep my parentage a
secret and make it appear that I was the child of a married couple.

"I feel, however, that I carried a lot of the surrounding guilt and
shame. The most difficult part was the secrecy and, as you say in your
article, being out of sync with the changing times now. When I try to
articulate and talk about the experience it seems a bit ridiculous to
be dwelling on it, as I am now in my 40s, but I don't think it goes
away until it is dealt with. I agree with your point that we need to
remember and explain to younger generations. There are reasons why I
am the way I am, why society is the way it is, and things that need to
be explained, opened up, accepted and forgiven."