The Declassified Adoptee

When we challenge adoption practices and policies, sometimes people become confused about why we do so.  Adoption provides homes for kids, why change it? People have gone so far to assert that those who want to change adoption must not want needy children to have homes..  People must assume that there are adoptees who make these opinions consumed by their own pain, not considering the needs of children, and haven't done their homework. In reality, many of us have been those children . I spent the first 4.5 months of my life in a foster home.  I do not know the names of my foster parents or where I lived.  I don't have any pictures or any real information about my life.  Since my state reformed its access laws 14 years after my birth, I now have my uncensored adoption file.  I know that I lived under a false alias and received medical care as an infant at a doctor's office where the agency presented my identity to my health care providers as being this false alias. 

These are the stories of two, real people, with their names changed on this blog. Alex was born in the 1950's. Haley was born in the 1980's. Alex's mother found it impossible to continue on living with her alcoholic husband.  But back in her day, women couldn't always just take their children and leave.  Divorce and single motherhood were heavily stigmatized and treated harshly by surrounding society.  So she left tearfully one day and moved across the country, leaving two-year-old Alex and his younger brother to be raised by her husband's mother. Haley's mother experienced an unplanned pregnancy as a teenager.  Unable to qualify for welfare because she was considered the dependant of a family who themselves could not qualify for welfare but could not readily afford to raise a baby without assistance either, Haley's mother sought out the help of an adoption agency.  But the agency pressured Haley's mother into thinking that the only way to do r