Telling stories about adoption
has played a crucial role in shaping and reshaping the modern adoption
experience. Today, autobiographical narratives by birth parents,
adoptees, and adoptive parents are as likely to appear on the Internet
or in broadcast media as in print. But stories have served historically
as crucial vehicles for adoption reform, facilitating the formation
of adoption communities and altering the way the parties to adoption
felt about themselves and one another. They have also helped to
bring adoption to the attention of a broad public and have effectively
conveyed the message—present in bible stories and fairy tales—that
adoption is at once unique and universal. Only a tiny minority of
children and families are touched by adoption, but as a symbol of
identity and belonging, adoption speaks to us all.
Early in the twentieth century, when children available for adoption
were suspected of being “bad seeds,” their birth
parents were presumed to be morally flawed, and child
welfare professionals believed that adoption should be avoided
at all costs, it took courage to come forward and share adoption
stories. Fictional portrayals of adoption were more common than
real-life stories, and they often took the form of formulaic and
sentimental moral parables. Most people who wrote about actual experiences
were adoptive mothers, perhaps because their claim to voluntary
motherhood made them appear more virtuous than birth mothers, who
had violated the rules of maternity by giving their children away.
These brave souls often told their stories anonymously, as if to
acknowledge that adoption evoked as much dismay as curiosity.
Narratives by adult adoptees were scarce before 1940, but they
invariably raised elemental questions about identity and belonging
and described early quests for community among adopted persons who
wished to find others like themselves. By midcentury, policies of
confidentiality and sealed records
had been instituted by most states. Their benign goal—to protect
children from the pain of being different—paradoxically reinforced
the stigma associated with natal families, life before adoption,
and efforts to locate relatives, making these stories even more
difficult to tell openly.
Adoption stories have often been narrated indirectly, in the third
person as well as the first. Social workers
recorded their impressions and countless details in case files and
conferences. Researchers conducting outcome
studies compiled what amounted to collective adoption biographies.
Lawyers deployed personal testimonies to persuade judges and juries
of the emotional damage done by the culture of secrecy. Curiously
enough, “telling” was not
an invitation to share autobiographical details. It described a
mandatory ritual, dreaded by many parents, of informing children
about their adopted status. Telling was a story, but one that included
few or no references to specific narrative details.
Adoption was a very sensitive subject, connected to other sensitive
subjects like infertility and illegitimacy.
The result was that magazine articles and books describing the personal
joys and sorrows of adoption attracted a great deal of curiosity
from the general public. The
Family Nobody Wanted (1954) was such a popular narrative
that Hollywood made two films out of it. Narratives touching on
controversial issues, such as transracial
adoptions, have been the most likely to be told through the
medium of television or in feature films. But adoption stories of
all kinds were eagerly read by people relieved to discover that
others felt as they did. When Jean Paton interviewed adult adoptees
and published their thoughts and feelings in 1954, she established
an organization called the Life History Study Center and called
her book The Adopted Break
Silence.
Stories were the antidote to secrecy. They pointed the way out
of the adoption closet. That is what made them powerful, frightening,
and enticing all at the same time. Narratives in which adults adoptees
described the pain associated with mysterious origins, the need
to search for natal kin, and the deep longing for the connection
of physical resemblance were significant in launching a movement
for search and reunion. The
Search for Anna Fisher (1973) was a classic in this genre,
along with Betty Jean Lifton’s Twice Born: Memoirs of
an Adopted Daughter (1975).
Adoptee narratives were soon joined by a flood of accounts by birth
mothers who testified to the long-term grief associated with surrender,
figured blood as an essential component of healthy identity, and
insisted that adoption had far more to do with coercion than with
choice. Stories like Carol Schaefer’s The Other Mother
(1991), which was turned into a television movie, brought renewed
attention to such organizations as Adoptees’ Liberty Movement
Association and Concerned United Birthparents.
These groups were pioneers in mobilizing narratives for political
purposes. In the 1970s and 1980s, stories figured prominently in
lawsuits, such as ALMA
v. Lefkowitz, that sought access to adoption records on
the theory that adoptees’ biographies had been buried and
distorted along with their birth certificates.
Since 1970, narratives have chronicled a sea change in thinking
about adoption and have also given expression to a multiplicity
of adoption experiences, such as transracial,
special needs, international,
and gay and lesbian adoptions. Some grew out of notorious cases
of conflict and tragedy. Robby DeBoer’s Losing Jessica
recounted a widely publicized case of contested adoption. Michele
Launders’ I Wish You Didn’t Know My Name was
written by the birth mother of Lisa Steinberg, a child who died
at the hands of her abusive adopters.
During the past three decades, more stories have described more
adoptions more openly than in the past, but they have done so with
more ambivalence. Margaret Moorman’s Waiting to Forget
(by a birth mother), Ann Kimble Loux’s The Limits of Hope
(by an adoptive mother), and Deann Borshay Liem’s documentary
film, “First Person Plural” (by an adoptee) are eloquent
examples. They testify that adoption is an always distinctive, often
difficult, form of family.
One thing that has changed very little in adoption narratives is
the female voice. Stories by male adoptees and adoptive fathers
are rare, and birth fathers’ stories are even rarer. Adoption
memoirs are still overwhelming authored by women. Is this because
women are considered specialists in “private” life experiences
such as childhood and family? Because women are more comfortable
with the confessional and emotional style of autobiography? Whatever
the reason, this gendered dimension of adoption narratives contrasts
sharply with the fact that adoption is a very public family-making
operation, and one that has been the target of almost constant political
and legal change throughout its modern history.
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