AIBU to have expected information from birth mother?

[FeetZelet]

Lurker & grateful beneficiary of advice, first time poster...

Looking for thoughts or experiences to help me understand the response I have received from my birth mother. Background - adopted at 8 weeks in 1970's, legally no access to identifying information from my adoption file but publicly available birth records & internet have led me to my birth mother & her family, they have some public profile. As was the norm, my father's name is not recorded on BC. It is on file but not available under data protection.

I am seeking genetic & medical information and wrote to a business address to seek to engage with BM 7 hopefully to progress to corresponding & exchange of info. My first very brief letter received no response for months so I wrote a second in which I asked for the name of my birth father and nothing else information wise. Gave some background info about my own life in the hope that this was a more human approach and that the details might have been of interest or of comfort but did not outright state she was my BM in case someone else read the letters.

Have now received a short reply, no name, no address included, some weeks later, stating that there was no information to be given and questioning my incorrect approach & the information I had illegally! I am shocked that a mother (she has multiple other children) could be so harsh and accusatory about something she knows to be true. I am also ashamed of having made contact after many decades to be rejected and made feel that I caused the problem. There is no possibility of mistaken i.d., also, some family members are physically very similar to me.

AIBU to expect that she should have replied to my first letter to state 'do not contact' me rather than risking a further approach? Also many months later, to basically tear me a new one for persisting? Feeling lost in this and would welcome other opinions.

No advice, and I don't really have a view on either side of it because, in my own life, I have learned that people have all kinds of views on how they'd behave if similar things happened to them that have to me, and it's never that easy... but I did want to send love, and support, and say that this must be so painful and I don't think you've done anything at all wrong, and of course you had to try. I do think some counselling might help, if you can access any, or afford some, not because there's anything wrong with your feelings or how you respond to this, but because sometimes being able to release your feelings in a safe place helps you move forward. It helped me last year with a cancer diagnosis, so even when it couldn't be more obvious that it can't change the situation, being able to release some of the stress and intensity of it can help. For you:

Drabarni the point is the same could be said in reverse.

Unless you've experienced the trauma of rape / abandonment / choosing or being forced to give up your child or any one of a hundred other scenarios you won't understand the emotions of others i.e. birth mothers

I feel for anyone who felt they had to give up children for adoption back then.

However I think that keeping that secret and never telling others including subsequent children about it is morally reprehensible.

If you have a baby then that baby is a part of you whether you kept him/her or not. By all means decide that once you’ve given up a child you don’t want any contact with them again, however if you have other children they are that child’s siblings and they have a right to know that they had a sibling out there. And in this day of ancestry and social media there is every chance that that adopted child will find those siblings and may attempt to contact them as happened with a PP’s sister, and that they will then find out they had a sibling they never knew about.

If they have never been told then the damage done is the fault of the person who decided not to tell, not the person who found them via other means. That person owes their BM nothing.

OP, you say that you have half siblings and that you’ve found them on social media? Do you think that perhaps you could contact them at least to get a bit of a background on your BM’s side of the family even if you don’t know who your BF was?

Please bear in mind that none of this was your fault, and that if your BM chose not to respond and indeed responded in such a harsh manner, then that is on her and not you.

Yanbu. .

I'm.sorry you thought I was being harsh but I wasn't. OP is not entitled to know anything of her bio parents. They have the right to privacy and not to have their lives and their familes lives upended

Of course it's complex, but the bm should at least be prepared to write a letter to their child. That's all it takes, just a bit of information about health, their father's name, reason why.
I think if they aren't prepared to do this then they deserve to be doorstepped.
I don't see any of my older birth family, but have met and they were pleasant. Some don't want to know and that's their choice. The younger ones are all on fb so I keep in touch that way.

OP, I'm sorry this has been such a difficult experience. I think some posters are not appreciating the state-and Church-sponsored climate of shame and incarceration that surrounded unwanted pregnancies and hence adoptions in Ireland in the 1970s, when contraception was illegal and abortion likewise, and women pregnant out of wedlock were still in some cases being sent to mother and baby homes/ Magdalene laundries run by religious orders, who also handled the adoptions of the babies, in some cases coercively -- and some of which continue to frustrate attempts by those adoptees to trace their birth parents. And for some older people, the shame continues, even in a climate of women speaking out about what they endured in the laundries and homes, state apologies and compensation.

OP, there's an adoption board on Mn which is mostly frequented by adopters, but there are some adult adoptees and birth mothers also on there. It might be worth posting there to get some further insights and sympathy. Very best wishes.

Those women who were promised confidentiality are entitled to have that respected

Very much this. Many women who gave up children for adoption did so in difficult circumstances. My own mum is an adoptee who has zero interest in her biological history, but knows she was given up for adoption because her biological mother was a married woman, with a son, whose husband came home from the war to find his wife pregnant with another man's baby. Who knows what position the mother was in when she became pregnant. She may not have heard from her husband for years and thought him dead. She may have been a rape victim. She may have sought comfort with a fellow human being as bombs rained around them and regretted it.

It doesn't matter. If your birth mother does not wish to be a part of your life, hard though that may be, you have to accept it. OP appears to be doing so and harsh comments from others about women whose lives they no nothing of are not useful to anyone else in such a situation.

I don't have anything to add that PP's haven't already said, but please be kind to yourself.

We are born in this world, with lots of questions that cannot be answered; however, who your birth parents are and answers to questions should be your right. If they are dead, then it should be any ofspring's right to meet a close relative. If they are a danger to the child, then upon reaching at least 16 they should be made aware. Bringing forth a child with a lack of knowledge and contact with BPs could cause that child to be dysfunctional, be subjected to unnessary suffering, and to take the baggage through to adulthood. Cutbacks in SS have not helped with the support needed in such circumstancies. YANBU

Reading about the experiences on here really highlights how badly adoption was dealt with years ago. It seems that adoptees and birth parents were given very little support!

It's a very complex situation, especially when you consider that years ago adoptions were often forced due to being unmarried etc, rather than down to neglect. I'm sure many birth mothers were totally traumatised.

My own grandmother was forced to give her daughter up for adoption when she was 15, so I do have a little insight. I think many people's coping mechanism was to completely shut down and erase that part of their life. Indeed, they were expected to! So it doesn't surprise me that birth mothers react badly to letters out of the blue.

So, from this angle, you are being unreasonable to expect your birth mother to even know how to handle it. My own grandmother cannot even talk about the daughter she gave up and 70years have passed. She isn't a horrible woman, she is a woman who has been forced to completely shut it out by society.

However, you are absolutely not being unreasonable to feel frustration, hurt, annoyance etc. From a normal perspective, we question why a woman cannot even write a polite letter back. But I guess we cannot judge this from a normal perspective.

Sorry, it's a load of waffle but I suppose I'm trying to say that nobody is in the wrong for their feelings. 

I'm.sorry you thought I was being harsh but I wasn't. OP is not entitled to know anything of her bio parents. They have the right to privacy and not to have their lives and their familes lives upended except that research has shown that children who don’t know about their birth families causes them far greater trauma than if they do know. This is why the law surrounding donor conception has been changed to allow the children of those conceptions to find out about their donor when they turn eighteen.

It’s why the files of adoptees are made available when they are eighteen in order that they can know about their heritage.

And it’s why the likes of ancestry do a DNA testing service and also social media makes it impossible for those details to remain private/confidential.

So, while someone may have been given that right to anonymity 50 years ago (given OP says she was born in the 60’s, that was at a time when there was little understanding of the impact that decision could have on the child,and given changes in that understanding and ability to find these details independently no longer applies.

"Background - adopted at 8 weeks in 1970's, legally no access to identifying information from my adoption file"
Back in 2013, I gained a couple of cousins who I knew nothing about. My aunt gave birth to them and then had them adopted out. The girl contacted Social Services at the council responsible for her adoption and she was provided with information, which I have seen, which included a statement about who her mother (my aunt) thought the father was. It also included information on how many other children my aunt had and some details about my aunt's grandmother's mental health condition. It also included the names and address of the adoptive parents of the other child, a boy, at the time that he had been adopted out.

She was then able, from public records, to determine who my aunt's other children were (from FreeBMD and ScotlandsPeople) and contacted them.

I don't understand why you do not have access to this information. Surely Data Protection hasn't substantially changed in this respect since 2013?

.

Reading about the experiences on here really highlights how badly adoption was dealt with years ago. It seems that adoptees and birth parents were given very little support! I agree. However I think that there needs to be a wider awareness raised towards birth parents who did give up their children in those years that progress in science and also technology/social media means that there is every likelihood that those children they gave up will be able to trace their families for themselves and may in fact get in touch with them, so while it may be a painful thought, if you chose to give up a child for adoption and never spoke of it to anyone, now might be the time to do so before that adoptee does it for you. Iyswim.

I think it is hard for those that haven’t been adopted to understand just how difficult it can be to not know where you came from, even if you’ve grown up in a lovely adoptive family.

All the logical arguements about confidentiality and the birth mother's rights are of course valid, but it makes it no less painful for the adopted person.

I understand how you feel OP.

except that research has shown that children who don’t know about their birth families causes them far greater trauma than if they do know.

This is very true. Years ago though, people thought it better to pretend it never happened though, and did not raise adopted children in this way or help the birth parents to be open. Birth parents were very much hidden and then expected to forget all about it. I think you are applying modern knowledge to something that was dealt with in a very different way years ago. You can't really expect birth parents who spent years being forced to keep it quiet to suddenly obey modern views that they need to now provide information.

All the logical arguements about confidentiality and the birth mother's rights are of course valid, but it makes it no less painful for the adopted person.

Again, I totally agree. A lot of damage was caused with the old fashioned ways of dealing with it.

But this is Ireland, not the UK. The law, as well as how adoptions would have been conducted in the 1970s, is different -- this change was going through the Oireachtas earlier this year, but I don't know whether the change has been ratified.

www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/adoption-law-changes-approved-by-cabinet-1.3807455

As far as I am aware, in law, before that, Irish adopted people had no automatic legal right to access their birth records -- the privacy of the birth mother was prioritised. At one point the proposed amendment to the law was that people would only get access to their records if they signed an undertaking that they would not contact their birth parents. That was being redrafted.

*OP is not entitled to know anything of her bio parents. They have the right to privacy and not to have their lives and their familes lives upended

I don't agree with this at all. Op is entitled to know her origin, her medical history. That is far more important than potentially 'upending' someone's life. My husband was adopted. He is every bit as entitled to know where he came from as I am. He's entitled to know his medical history which not only affects him, but our kids. He is nobody's secret and nobody else's right to privacy trumps his right to know who is is. I'm so glad he didn't listen to the likes of the above crap when he chose to look for his birth mother.

A consenting adult that brings forth a child, should then ensure that the child has knowledge of your existance, and any relevant questions answered.
A child conceived as a result of rape, should also have the right, on the grounds that two people are now victims, and why should both be suffering. The victim knows what happened and needs to deal with that, the child has no knowledge, hasn't got a clue what the hell happened and cannot deal with it. The child will suffer potentially a longer time, and endd up as a dysfunctionasl adult as a result.

But @Drum2018, the poster you are responding to is correct, in legal terms in Irish law until very recently, if I understand the new bill rightly. That doesn't make it any less painful for the OP, obviously, but there was no legal entitlement.

This is very true. Years ago though, people thought it better to pretend it never happened though, and did not raise adopted children in this way or help the birth parents to be open. Birth parents were very much hidden and then expected to forget all about it. I think you are applying modern knowledge to something that was dealt with in a very different way years ago. You can't really expect birth parents who spent years being forced to keep it quiet to suddenly obey modern views that they need to now provide information. perhaps not, but the reality is that with modern means/technology it is possible for the adoptee to find that family even if the birth parents chose back then not to tell anyone about the adoption.

So while someone who gave up a child never told anyone they had done so and went on to have subsequent children might have gone to the grave with that information 50 years ago, these days that information can be obtained without their knowledge/consent/input, so they may be forced to answer those difficult questions regardless and this in itself is potentially going to cause additional stress to them.

Which is why I think that there does need to be some sort of campaign to raise awareness of the means that adoptees can and will find their biological family, so if the birth parent doesn’t want their subsequent children to find out via facebook, now might be a good time to have that conversation they never thought they would have to have.

It’s hard I’m sure but technology has taken that power away from them.

The fact that you're in Ireland may be very relevant to your BM's reaction. I'm not excusing it at all but the way unmarried pregnant women were treated and the shame and secrecy may well explain some of her reaction.

I don't know who you saw for counselling before but a colleague found Barnardos really good in the run up to her looking for her BM.

I have seen in my family the impact of refusal to release information and it is just heart-breaking. I think sometimes when people argue for a BM's right to privacy they don't quite get that her birth child is asking for information and that is a very different thing to asking for communication or a relationship. Sometimes very simple details that do not in any way alter the BM's life can feel (maybe even be) life-changing to the BC who receives them.

Wishing you well OP.

@AlternativePerspective

"And it’s why the likes of ancestry do a DNA testing service and also social media makes it impossible for those details to remain private/confidential."
This is so true. Some weeks ago I was contacted by a lady via ancestry.co.uk who had done a DNA test because she knew that her father had been adopted and didn't know who his parents were. ancestry.co.uk linked her to many members of my family tree which resulted in it looking as if one of my great aunts (my paternal nan's sister) is her father's birth mother. She was then able to go to hospital records and trace her father's actual birth to my said great aunt.

She is now in the position where she actually knows who both of her father's birth parents are, it has been proved by documentary evidence and she knows that his mother was abandoned by her married lover. She knows what his birth father looks like but doesn't have pictures of his birth mother (which I am endeavouring to track down through in-laws rather than direct family members).

So that is a paternal 2nd cousin I have gained in adition to the two cousins on the maternal side of my family. Who knows whether I have more?

DNA is definitely a game-changer for adoptees and I am so pleased. I don't agree that anyone should be out there desperate to know who their birth parents are and never knowing. That must be a real headfuck.

Brackish has very much summarised my situation, 1970's Ireland was not a caring place for women. Data protection exclusions apply to adopted people and state security issues only still. Brackish the legislation you reference has not been enacted to date.

I do strongly believe in a right to access genetic information however I also absolutely understand that

OP,8 have had almost the EXACT same experience. Mine ignored first letter so I wrote again and she wrote a really nasty letter back, very impersonal and stated categorically she wanted nothing to do it’s me and hadn’t thought about me in all these years. However, I know she met and married someone shortly after having my younger brother (also adopted) , I don’t think she ever told her new husband and subsequently the daughter she kept. Was about 10/12 years ago for me now so I’m no longer upset anymore just a bit cross that she had the last word. I have found siblings too, yet there is one that she ‘kept’, the only sister. I have found her on social media. I am pretty sure she doesn’t know the rest of us exist. The whole thing has affected my brother way more than me to be honest. I hope you are ok. It’s pretty shit eh