For adopted children searching for their birth parents, the process can be frustrating, not to mention unsatisfying. New legislation aims to change that, but it needs to acknowledge the potential trauma on both sides
TO TRACK DOWN his birth mother, Adrian McKenna bypassed the rules with some amateur sleuthing. Since 1952, an adopted person in Ireland has no legal right to gain access to their birth certificate or other information contained in their adoption file.
McKenna’s way around this was to walk into the research area of the General Register Office and search through public records of births, deaths and marriages. All he knew was his date of birth and the area he was born in. There’s a way to spot the birth cert of an adoptee, McKenna explains, and through a process of elimination, he was left with one: his own.
From there he used his birth mother’s name to expand the search, one sliver of information at a time, until he pieced everything together.
“By the time I was finished, I knew who her parents were, who she had married, where they lived, all the names and ages of my brothers, sisters and cousins, where they all lived and whether they were married.
“I had assembled my whole family tree, something I had never done with my adopted family.” McKenna, a 46-year-old social worker, says there are countless others resorting to the same “rigmarole” out of frustration with having to wait up to two years just to discuss the prospect of tracing with an adoption agency.
For some, that wait is a race against time, knowing their birth parents may die before their search can lead anywhere. For others, like McKenna, it’s a two-tier system where adopted people feel like second-class citizens.
That could be about to change. Legislation to help adopted children trace their parents has been promised by the new Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald, whose spokeswoman says work has begun on the heads of a Bill. But its feasibility remains unclear and disrupting the status quo will require careful deliberation.
“At the moment it’s all undercover – it’s like espionage,” says McKenna. “And it can be very, very messy. Personally I’d like to see it regulated. Good legislation wouldn’t just allow everyone to rush in to get their file – when someone decides to do this, they’re already emotionally wrought. There should be support there for either side.” Though working alone, McKenna appreciated the need for a third-party mediator before he approached his birth mother. He reached out to her older sister, who had supported her through the adoption process. His birth mother had married soon after the adoption, giving her second-born the same name: Gerard. Now McKenna learned that hardship had followed and she wasn’t prepared to revisit the past.
“There may have been a lot she was not dealing with well, and me appearing back on the scene was going to be difficult,” he says. “But I never got to talk to her, so I don’t know. Life had moved on for her and that was that.” McKenna says that, while birth mothers should be notified and offered support when reunion is sought, their need for privacy shouldn’t overrule the adopted person’s right to access their birth cert or medical history.
“The reality is, any adopted person in this country can get access to their birth cert, find out who their natural mother is and, in the eyes of Irish law, walk up and say ‘I’m your son or daughter’. I’ve supported 40 or 50 people through that process and I’m not the only one.
“That will continue, no matter what happens with the law. For us not to enact legislation to allow the rest of the process to happen is disingenuous to all of us.”
Turning up on someone’s doorstep is like throwing a hand grenade into a family, says Helen Gilmartin of the Adoptive Parent’s Association of Ireland. Gilmartin has helped trace people internationally, but avoids simply passing on information to the searcher, either the adopted person or the birth mother, because she feels strongly about sudden and uninvited contact. “The person searching knows what they’re doing,” she says. “But for the person who is found, unless they’re involved, it’s a bolt from the blue.
“There may be women in their seventies who have never told their husband or children they had a child before they were married. One woman said she got such a fright that she slammed down the phone and didn’t remember what agency it was.
“Thankfully it was just a knee-jerk reaction and it all worked out. But if anybody wants a sensible reunion you have to be considerate and careful. Otherwise the door will almost certainly be slammed in your face. How do you ever come back from that?” Gilmartin adopted four children during the 1970s and early 1980s, a time when the process was known as “closed” or “clean break” adoption. There was secrecy on both sides, she says, with each party undertaking never to intrude into the other’s life.
Having spoken to countless young adoptees, adoptive parents and birth parents, Gilmartin appreciates the equilibrium of issues involved in tracing. There are those afraid of being perceived as disloyal to their adoptive parents; adoptive parents worried about contact coinciding with exams or fractured relationships; those who fear disruption and those who long for contact but don’t know how to initiate it.
“You have to be prepared for huge emotional turmoil so timing, age and maturity are absolutely crucial,” she says. “When someone is contacted and they’ve just buried a parent or lost a job, the answer could be no – but it doesn’t mean no forever.”
Gilmartin believes the best system currently available is the national adoption contact preference register, established in 2005 to assist adopted people and their natural families in tracing, which she feels has been under-promoted. A spokeswoman for the Adoption Authority says the new legislation proposed would see the contact register regulated on a statutory basis. Participants specify what level of communication they want – even if it’s just passing on medical history – and action is only taken if both sides register. There are currently 6,372 adopted people and 2,843 natural relatives registered, resulting in approximately 500 matches. Over 42,000 people have been adopted in Ireland since 1952.
Many respondents said that, at the time of adoption, they were told they had no right to receive any information regarding their child. Because of that, many never attempted to make contact.
That’s how it was for Philomena Lynott. In the three years after she gave birth to Phil Lynott in 1949, she had another two children in Britain, both of whom she was persuaded to part with while they were in care.
“They showed you that the child would have a better life elsewhere,” she says. “At the time, I had nothing. I had gone down to six stone. You have to remember people like me we were called sinners; fallen women. I was battered, beaten and spat on.” There were no agencies then, Lynott explains, and there was an implicit understanding not to interfere in the child’s life post-adoption.
"You never knew if you'd see them again but every birthday, every time you saw another child, you were thinking of them." Because her mother was a stern "God-fearing woman" who lived until the age of 93, Lynott kept these two children a secret, even avoiding any mention of them in her 1995 memoir, My Boy.
"I would have hated her to think I'd fallen so many times. I had five sisters and my father walked them all down the aisle. They were good girls. I was the wild one. No wonder Philip wrote a song called The Wild One." One day there was a phone call. Her second-born, also named Philomena, had found her. When they met, they made a pact to keep it secret until both Philomena's adoptive parents and Lynott's own mother had passed away.
Years later, when the adoptive parents of her third-born, Leslie, had died, he found a tin box containing his birth cert and was also able to trace her.
Now the three are inseparable, she says, and My Boyhas been rewritten to include her previously unspoken difficulties and the "happy ending" that followed. Now 80, Lynott has a better understanding of "closed" adoption's legacy after holding book signings around the country.
“People are coming up to me in tears,” she says. “Some found their birth mothers but haven’t been accepted because the shame lingered on, or their family would have been mortified. That’s still happening. I’m getting heart-rending letters. But I think people should reach out to each other if they can. Many a lady has gone to her grave wondering what happened to her babies, [feeling] unable to do anything about it.”
Adoption Authority of Ireland, with information on the national adoption contact preference register: aai.gov.ie
See also: adoptionrightsalliance.com; barnardos.ie
