The Year 2011 in Adoption: some good news, some setbacks

Jane and Lorraine, 1983

Some gains, some frustrations...that's the year in adoption news.

• Adoption was in the news this year starting in January with Oprah's revelation that she had a sister who had been adopted. This being about Oprah, her sister's lengthy search was documented everywhere, providing a spotlight on the fact that individuals who are adopted are still denied free access to their original birth records in the vast majority of states, though many have half-way measures in place.

• The best news of the year was the Rhode Island--the smallest state in the Union--passed a bill that will allow anyone 25 and over full access to their original birth records come July 2012.  The age of 25 was a compromise after Senate Majority Whip Maryellen Goodwin, a Democrat from Providence, wanted to raise the age to 30 so adoptees wouldn't ask for their birth certificates out of spite. Goodwin's sister has two adopted children. “I think 18 is too young,” said Goodwin. “It’s a tender age. I want them to be able to find their records in an appropriate and meaningful kind of way,

Should I tell my (adopted) child she's adopted?

Same-size Lorraine and real daughter Jane

You would think that the old and tired question of whether to tell your ''adopted" child she or he was adopted would have gone the way of Fifties Poodle skirts and Sixties love beads. But you would be wrong.

Over at Salon the guy who writes the advice column "Since You Asked" finds himself responding to an I-own-this-remarkable-kid-adoptive-mother who basically asks if her daughter ever need to be told the truth of her origins, and oh,. how she is wrestling with this question. (This issue of truth in identity must be in the air because yesterday's column idea--about daddies--seemed to come to me out of the blue.)

Are you friggen' kidding me? In this day and age?

Why not wait until some truth-telling cousin spills the beans? Or your best friend's daughter who is friends with your  daughter, and who has heard her adoption spoken of at home, blurts out the