Long Lost Family

[HollowTalk]

Is anyone else watching this? It's very moving - it's about foundlings.

It’s so sad ..... I really hope they find family members for them!

I can't work out how they trace using DNA isn't DNA not shared ?

On Ancestry you can post your DNA so that if someone else is researching their family history it shows if there's a match, Processedpea. If further info's available you can find out then whether you share a mum or a dad.

I know what you mean ..... and it’s obviously a massive shock to the abandoner ( not sure there is such a word! - the one who gave them up)when Davinas tribe come a knocking!

That's right! You can't imagine how tightly some people hold that secret to themselves. I can't imagine they'd want to be on TV talking about it.

This doesn’t sit very comfortably with me. Abandoned babies, tragic though it is, are not abandoned on a whim. There is a reason (and they’re not usually nice ones) why a woman would leave a baby anonymously rather than go through social services. Be that abuse, stigma, cultural issues, whatever. And wrong or not they do it anonymously because they are scared that’s probably their very very last choice.....
And decades later someone somewhere can run a few tests and pin you down, potentially with enormous consequences.
If subsequent to abandoning the baby, years later, you felt so inclined to identify yourself this could be done. These women choose to remain anonymous.
Desperate though these people are (and I am adopted so I do speak with some experience) this isn’t necessarily a wise thing to do for both sides concerned. It just feels like a step too far.

The mothers so far have died, though, and they've traced the families through siblings leaving their DNA on Ancestry, so presumably they were open to be traced.

I do know what you mean, though.

But the siblings would have zero idea of the backstory when they embarked on a bit of ancestry delving as a hobby? I doubt they were leaving their DNA on the offchance that their mother or aunt left a baby on a doorstep that they never wanted them to know about. They probably thought they might find out about distant cousins and so forth.
I feel sorry for them but I also feel sorry for other mothers of abandoned babies who may now be panicking that their history will out. The repercussions could be far reaching.

It's devastating, all that sadness and years of pain and secrecy.

Thank goodness these for these welcoming siblings, imagine their utter shock. You expect to find cousins not siblings!

I imagine they've only shown happy endings, though.

It's very difficult, isn't it? Forgetting the fact that it's on TV, which is another complication, I think people should have the right to track their parents, and I think that right should over-ride the parents' right to be found.

Where these dna matches were coming from wasn’t explained. Do we know it was from the ancestry dna database? It should definitely make people think twice, if a TV company can access this database and contact people I would have concerns about what this dna could be used for in the future.

I missed some of this programme. Was there any explanation why one of the foundlings was left outside a door in a block of flats? It seems a strange place and quite a lot of effort for the poor lady, who I assume had just given birth on her own, to go up a flight of stairs to leave a baby.

I do wonder about the ramifications of programmes like this. I too am adopted. I am sure they only show the success stories, and that there are quite a few searches that are left on the cutting room floor. It must be so hard for siblings to find out that their mum had left a sibling in a cardboard box somewhere (in one case 2 siblings) but had kept them and subsequent children. Must cause them guilt, where there should be no guilt.

I assume all these people get offered counselling. Also when they are being filmed, I always wonder how many retakes have to be made, to get the right angles etc.

I think people should have the right to track their parents, and I think that right should over-ride the parents' right to be found

Far too simplistic. In the 60s women gave up babies for adoption with the promise that their privacy would be maintained. A close friend of mine became pregnant (aged 15) in the most awful of circumstances. She was persuaded by her priest to not have an abortion and to have the child adopted.

She slowly rebuilt her life and eventually married and had a family. Her husband and children know nothing of the first pregnancy, she cannot bring herself to tell him the awful circumstances. Now she lives in fear of a knock on the door from her first child. She does not want him in her life and neither does she want to have to explain the dreadful circumstances of his conception.

She has a right to demand that the promise made to her was kept. Now she wishes she'd had an abortion.

I was born in the 60s, so my birth mother would have been given that promise too.

When I was 10 I remember watching a tv programme Nationwide (showing my age!) and they had an article about how the law had changed and that adopted children now had the right to search for their parents. I remember sitting there thinking that applies to me, but also thinking what a shock that would be for the parents who could now be traced, who thought they never could be. That image has stayed with me all these years.

The whole thing is an utter minefield and I have huge sympathy for all the people involved.

I remember watching the film "Secrets and Lies" and being brutally aware at how bloody hard and complicated life is.

I think "these days" it's actually difficult to imAgine the utter poverty and shame that would come with having a child on your own. In the 50s my Grandma was made homeless with 5 children when my Grandad died of cancer as a firefighter (lived at the fire station) her choice was either put her DC in care or move back in with her abusive father

Also having subsequent DC after place for adoption/"abandoning" a newborn - I would think that was really common, women desperate to fill the void of losing their baby. It's pretty common with women that have abortions or have DC taken into care.

Why is life just so I dunno complex

I usually find Long Lost Family interesting but felt very uncomfortable watching this foundling programme.
I felt sorry for the youngest lady whose mother and father had been found but both said they didn’t want contact. Rejection for her all over again.
I think it’s one thing for siblings to learn an earlier child was adopted when mum was very young , another to discover she abandoned later children in a cardboard box. It must change how you feel about your mother surely.
Poor desperate mums.

I am also assuming that some of these searches could throw up some horrible family issues eg incest, especially where foundlings are concerned.

Oh thanks very much for this thread

I love this show and didn't realise it was back

I normally love the programme but felt very uncomfortable last night. I'm sure those poor women must have been in a terrible way to abandon their babies, otherwise they would have put them up for adoption the normal way. For them to totally abandon them like that, they must have been making absolutely certain that they couldn't be traced. This DNA database has taken that away from them, and they must be living in fear of it coming out.

Another one who felt uncomfortable with it. I felt for the sister who was ten when her mother was pregnant - she must now be questioning everthing she knew about her mother, not only that she could give a baby up, but the fact that she (the daughter) hadn't noticed.

I wonder how many they traced by didn't have happy endings for.

My father was adopted shortly after birth , he didn’t trace his family until his late twenties . I think he will forever regret that he ever did . It wasn’t some sort of rosey, cuddly reunion - it was mental illness, memories of teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, suicide attempts . Caused him no end of trauma . He will never know his father , and I think realistically that is as it should be . It is his mothers story to tell, not for us to discover , and she’s dead long ago . Genealogy is different as the people you search are dead and buried years and years ago . This is too recent and involves often living people who were facing horrific circumstances or those who now have to face realising their mother or father wasn’t necessarily the person they believed them to be , don’t believe it should be televised .

Same sort of thing , a very lovely friend has adopted DCs . Their biological parent has made repeated attempts to contact via social media after recognising a photo . Whole family gutted . Not OK at all .

Whole thing with internet , social media brings up lots of issues ... never even thought about the wider implications of handing your dna over to a company ...

I've just watched it and this is my take :

Whilst it's true that the women who did this were as one foundling put it "tortured souls" their MH struggle does not trump, nor is it less than the profound life long MH struggle of "my mum not only didn't want to keep me but just dumped me, a helpless newborn, to my fate with no regard for whether I lived or died before I was found"

So in my view the Foundlings are entitled to search for answers and the entitlement to keep a skeleton in the closet is mitigated by the sensitivity with which this was handled.

Unless the family consented the mothers and fathers were not named, and did not appear on camera

I strongly got the impression that Jamie's father would meet him but not on camera and didn't actually have a clue he existed which is huge.

Reuniting with birth families is a nightmare for some people, definitely and I know of someone for whom this was the case.

Increasingly this experience will become the norm as opposed to the exception because adopted children are now close to 0% voluntary surrenders in this country and have usually been removed at birth only if other children were removed before them.

The show still mostly features Unmarried Mums Of The 50s-70s and has yet to tackle the more modern adoptive background

It also glosses over the complexities of bonding with strangers who are relatives who are relative strangers and does try and focus on happy ever afters.

I also felt very uncomfortable watching. Surely data protection laws cover the use of familial DNA, but they spoke with relatives and took DNA from some of them. I feel this is an absolute abuse of DNA testing, imagine if you'd been raped and a TV show not only found you using your siblings but had also effectively alerted your family to the fact you'd abandoned the baby.
Its dreadful for the people who were abandoned but its equally as emotionally damaging to the parents.

The implications could be quite huge for accessible DNA. It’s also being used by law enforcement to solve crimes. Not sure if it’s been done in the UK but definitely the US. Most recently a prolific violent rapist, who’d eluded capture for over a decade, was found by uploading Crime scene DNA to genealogy websites.

My DH is on one of those sites but he had to give express consent for his DNA to be searchable on the database.