Adoptees' rights must be considered first

Lorraine

From The New York Times, Op-Ed Page, March 1, 1975:

Yearning

Who am I? Who are my real parents? Whom do I look like? Most of us the the answers for granted. But a 40-year-old accountant recently was forced to go to court in an attempt to learn such basic information about herself.

Ann Scharp, the accountant, is one of approximately five million adopted people in this country. In virtually every state, including New York adopted persons of any age are denied the right to know who their natural parents are because the laws seal the original birth records.

Confronting the shame upon admitting I gave up a child

Lorraine

What was it like coming out of the closet when it was very lonely out there? In the late 1970s, only a small handful of women, spoke openly about this "shameful" deed we had done in the national media. What was shameful was not sleeping with someone we loved, the shame was that we had given up our babies. 

Adoptees sometimes cannot understand why their mothers are so traumatized that they cannot deal with the reunion, or the reality of their child, now grown, now an adult. For many of us, that deep sense of shame and humiliation that we felt when we gave up our children now comes back in full force, and we ourselves do not understand why the reunion is so deeply disturbing. To try to explain what it was like in the Seventies to come out publicly, I am post an excerpt from the memoir, Hole in My Heart, that I am working on (and hope to be finished with very soon). The year is

Joyce Brothers touted the advantages of being adopted

photo by Marty Liederhandler of AP

Pop psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers who died yesterday was a pillar of the old adoption mindset that we are still combating today. She was the Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil of an earlier era, and the first to dispense advice to the masses with the patina of a psychology degree behind it. She was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, and her charming, reassuring demeanor appealed to television audiences. Reading a few of her old columns gives us a window on the world in the Seventies and Eighties.

In 1976, she "strongly" advised a woman who got pregnant by "mistake," and who wants to go to law school, to consider adoption. "Several studies indicate that illegitimate children who are adopted fare better than those who remain with the natural parent," Brothers wrote. "The adopted are generally more confident and better adapted socially. "

How to Answer: Do you have any children?

Lorraine

Do you have children? Or, how many children do you have?

Simple enough, unless you are a first mother. The person asking obviously doesn't know you well, so even if you are Out as a first mother, do you really want to go into it right then and there? You may be at the bridge club. You may be meeting someone in an airplane. You may be at a cocktail party and getting along like a house afire with the woman you met over the canapes. You may be with friends of yours having lunch and somebody has brought along a new person, and she is getting to know you and the question looms, and you know the whole answer but geeze, you think, Do I have to go into it right now? 

Of course not. Pick your moment. Talking about relinquishing a child is not light party patter.