Adoptive Parent Interview – Live

Adoption in that era, the 1950’s through to early 1970’s, was considered the answer to an infertile, married couple. Society’s expectation that a married couple have children, placed pressure on married couples, so the government came up with the solution of adoption. Rather than assist young, vulnerable expectant mothers, the government decided to farm the babies to the above mentioned couples, believing that the “problem” would be solved. This practice caused way more damage than good. Today, there are as few as 317 adoptions per year here, with that number decreasing annually. Although the reactive perception may well be, “that is not a good thing” or “we need to increase those numbers” or perhaps, “we need to adopt more children”, the reality is that fewer adoptions are a very good thing. It means less children being removed from their country and less children being removed from their families. It means for the adoptee, that their identity remain intact, their family and heritage remain intact, the trauma non existent and they have a much better chance for a mentally and emotionally healthy life. These may be “just words” but to an adoptee, it literally means everything.


Here is the recording:

When a woman has a miscarriage, it is a death. She requires a period of time to grieve; to emotionally heal from the loss. In this situation, the adoption occurred very close to the loss of a second miscarriage therefore, allowing no time to grieve. The transference of grief and resentment might well be placed upon the adopted baby. Resentment seems evident throughout the recording, not only towards the baby but also the biological mother. She also states that it was her husband that wanted to adopt, indicating that adoption was not her choice. The recording also reflects the “production line” of babies. That in fact adoptees were not “chosen” as they are so often told. The story told here is very similar to other adoptees stories. In 1988, the birth records were open and accessible to adoptees which enabled them to obtain their identifying information.

Another false ideation, promoted by the powers that be, is that the baby is a “blank slate”, void of memory, personality and emotion, therefore could be moulded into the alternative parents desires. It seemed though, that there was awareness that the adoptee would in fact arrive with some sort of personality. This is reflected by the comment that, “you don’t know what you’re getting”. Aside from the fact that you’re getting someone else’s child, a human being, who is deserving of love and all that is love, you are also getting a traumatised little person however this was an unknown factor in that time. Expectations were placed upon the child to behave and be as the adoptive parent/s required. Of course this ignored their genetic makeup, emotional experience in the womb and trauma of separation from their mother. This ignored who they were, ultimately leading to a life of identity confusion and disenfranchised grief for the adoptee. If, what happened to them at birth, was not addressed and managed, it would mean that their entire life would be filtered through the adoption experience.

Many adopters claim that adoption was an open subject however as reflected over the decades by all concerned, it was very much a closed subject. Certainly in my house the rare mention of adoption made my mother cringe. Her tone changed abruptly, questions were answered as short as possible or shrugged off completely. For her, it’s still a prickly subject. The focus of giving of materialistic things, even moreso because “you didn’t have your father around”, rather than of love, indicates the lack of emotional attachment to the child. Running away from home may well have been a defiant action, an action which no one seemed to have the answer for, certainly not a 13 year old, but to actually believe that the act of materialistic giving is going to compensate for what is actually missing, love, nurturing and acceptance, is extremely naive and dangerous. Of course, you don’t need a degree to work out that these beliefs and behaviours are not a mentally healthy way to raise an adopted child.

Although it’s not spelt out in black and white, it’s not that difficult to see how the adoptive mother really felt and thought about adoption.

Please understand that an adopted child is NOT genetically coded the same as the adoptive parents, therefore MUST NOT be expected to behave like the parents or adoptive family. NOR must they be expected to change who they are for the satisfaction of the parents. On top of already being different and possibly labelled as a problem child, adding pressure to conform is a recipe for disaster, as so often it was and still is the situation. How many adopted animals end up back in shelters, are abused or passed on because they were adopted for being cute or to fill a need? Adoption is not only NOT A CURE for infertility, it is also NOT THE ANSWER for the NEEDS of ADULTS.