Bergwall, Blog 8: Adoption Freedom Pending

To know who you are is important and many children do not know who they are. Being adopted comes with challenges for the adopted and the adopted parents concerning identity. Centering the child to his or her identity is a major concern to adoption reformers. Adopted children many times find they have not bonded with their adopted parents and search for that missing link that bonding with a birth parent can bring. Also many content successful adoption matches feel the need to seek out who their birth parents were and find out the whys and how comes of their adoption.

Twenty, thirty or forty years ago adoptions were being kept very secret. Non-disclosure was the rule of the day. Many times they were born out of wedlock to teenage parents that had no way to care for an infant. The adoption occurred with the social stigma of not allowing the name of the birth parent to be found out, this was to ward off embarrassment to the family.

This is 2010 and stigmas have changed. Now it is not the end all to have a baby out of wedlock and we now face the facts that adoption may be the best resource for many couple to go to. This era supports open adoptions where the birth parents can have contact and knowledge how the child is doing. The process seems to bring less conflict to the child in dealing with their identity. More emphasis is being put on helping the families be whole.

This year Minnesota Legislation Bill 1679 authored by Representative Simon is being sponsored so that people that have been adopted can request information at age 19 about their birth parents. If the adoption is a non-disclosure adoption, there will be avenues where the adopted can petition the court for disclosure. The bill is stuck in the Minnesota House with some authors dropping out much to the dismay of many progressive adoption reformers.


My friend was adopted in the late 40’s and was adopted by not very nice parents. She wanted to find her birth parents in 70’s but was not allowed to because of the non-disclosure agreement. In her case her father had put her up for adoption and pressured the mother to release to adopt. Finding her mother was her greatest quest; she had to wait until the death of her adopted mother to petition the courts for information. She found her birth mother after a great search and that bonding was the missing link of her identity.

I am parents of adopted children that were neglected. They knew their birth parents and they have the names of their birth parents. We all know at some point they will go to meet their birth parents and find out who they are now. They are not as curious as some adopted children are and that is because they remember who these birth parents were. The link of identity is known to them and the safety of their new life has helped them move on to a better life of peace within themselves.

This Bill 1679 can help children that were born under the stigma of embarrassment. It will help the adopted find closure of who they are. Society is now more open to disclosure of the past; although there maybe some still stuck in the past that do not want to be reunited. This may turn painful for some, but for others a sense of knowing where they came from will be healing. Now we wait for the Minnesota Legislators to find their way through this bill to help the adopted find their identities.