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Originally Posted by Peace.
I wonder what aparents were told about reunions (back in the '60's-'70's closed adoption epidemic). Was it considered that bparents and children could/would ever find each other..or were the laws and society's attitudes sufficient for you all to believe it wouldn't be an issue. Were aparents counselled on the differences in rasing adopted kids or was/is there more time spent in grilling the applicant for their sutability as a parent?
I never really considered searching for 30 years, but as time passes and especially since the birth of my 2 children (3 & 17mths) the need to see my biological family gets stonger.
I also wonder if perhaps after 30+ years of not dealing with it every one thinks that it doesn't need to be addressed and are therefore taken by surprise ( and probably hurt) when we drop it on them that it is still 'there'.
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I wonder if they were told anything.
I know they were told that babies were a blank sheet, that you could make into someone "just like you".. Before DNA, before genetics proved otherwise. Even though we all know we inherit traits from our bio family. In adoption at birth, doctors actually told PAPs that children would be whatever you wanted them to be.
That the birthmothers would forget and not to worry about them.
Birthmothers were told to go home, pretend like it never happened, not to ever talk about it.
No one would talk to the birthmother about it, there were no therapy for it.
Some did go home to pretend and never tell.
Others, like me, couldn't live with our children. My OBGYN was really pissed at me when I showed up in his office at 17, Just weeks after my birthson had turned one. Married and pregnant with my second child.
I didn't do what he expected, "go on with my life"... I found my life incomplete without my child, so I wanted another baby to take his place. Another baby cannot take the place of the first one. You just get another baby to love.
Oh and that old saying, "go on with your life", the opposite is to "not go on with life" to die, and some birthmothers did commit suicide. Or turned to drugs or alcohol to dull the pain of that loss. They weren't alcoholics or drug addicts before they were corerced into giving up their babies.
Some never had any other children because they beleived they would never be "good enough" to mother a child.
Some had secondary infertility and could never concieve again.
That is why, a few, certainly not all, aparents are so surprised when the adoptee wants to search. They too pretended, they too ignored what nature told them. Just as they had been told to do.
Such was life in the time before the 1980s..