Should adoptees contact their siblings when first parents are reluctant?

Amy Dickinson

"Should I contact my siblings (or half siblings) even though my first mother wants to keep me a secret and hasn't told them about me?' "It's my right, to know them and their right to know isn't it?" Advice columnist Amy Dickinson (ASK AMY)  handled these questions deftly in two recent columns, showing understanding and sensitivity. Her response was a welcome change we must say from those self-designated experts--Joyce Brothers, Ann Landers, Drs. Drew, Phil, and Laura, and Marguerite Kelly with their cookie-cutter, birth-family-be-damned answers to all questions adoption.

An adoptee, identified as DQ, asked about contacting her full birth siblings. Her adoptive parents had told her that her first parents were married but gave her up because they didn't want children. After her adoptive parents' deaths, she found her first parents and learned they had had three more children after she was given up.

Does one adoption spawn another? Too often for comfort.

Jane & I bought the same black stone washed jeans independentl

As many of the comments regarding the previous post about "I'm Having Their Baby" centered around whether or not adoptees are more likely to give up their babies than the non adopted, I wanted to follow up and am posting below a section of the memoir I'm working on that covers that very issue. The court case in which I first heard of any adoptee also being a mother who surrenders occurred in 1976, and that is where this section begins:

What can you write about adoption? And what is off limits?

Lorraine and her new accessory

What are the limits of what one can write about in regards to adoption personally, since after all, in writing anything at all, you are writing about at least one other person, possibly more. It's an issue that has come up not only at First Mother Forum but other blogs--and now The Huffington Post.

Last week a brave adoptive mother, Dina McQueen, wrote a revealing post about her four-year-old daughter from Ethiopia. In it she wrote of how, since McQueen had video of the girl's birth mother bringing the daughter, now named Aster, to the drop off, the little girl wanted to watch the video over and over and over again, and how she became inconsolable for a brief time after--though it seemed long to Mother McQueen. I forget exactly what the girl, Aster, called her video but it had some version of "birth mother" in it. Eventually, with time, love and patience, McQueen was able to calm the girl down and the post ended with the girl, at least for the time being, able to move on with her American mother to a sweet resolution.

Catelynn & Tyler's open adoption will stay open; for other first mothers, not so much

 Lorraine

Breaking News: First Mother Carla Moquin lost her case to have the adoption of her daughter overturned because the adopters, Susan Englert and Demyn Platenberg, went back on their open adoption promises. Carla is planning to appeal to the California Supreme Court.  Now back to the regular programming:

Before we leave Catelynn and Tyler, America's most celebrated birth/first parents, it's obvious that their decision to relinquish their