Sir, - I have followed with concerned surprise the controversy about open adoption records. One of the things we have valued most in our times in Ireland is the strong family commitment of the Irish, yet what is being overlooked here is the psychological destruction of families, where an adoption has taken place, by the suggestion that an adopted child has a second family. The intent of adoption, indeed the legal wording, is that an adopted child becomes in every way as much a member of his new family as any other family member. He, and the rest of his family, need to feel this. He, and they, are entitled to this. This is his family for better or worse - there is no other! To suggest that there is, by giving credibility to another family, with legislation recognising its viability in a child's future, grossly undermines the adoption concept. A child cannot feel complete security in his family if another, endorsed by legislative and public thinking, is lurking in the background to surface sometime in the future.
It is this issue, the issue of starting at the beginning at what an adoption is supposed to be - the creation of a secure, permanent family - and how open record legislation psychologically erodes this, that has defeated this legislation every time it has appeared in the United States in the North Carolina General Assembly where I have been actively involved in its defeat.
When a compromise has been sought with a voluntary registry, where both birth parent and adoptee (over a certain age) would submit names independently with no coercion, this too has been wisely dismissed because of the impossibility of stopping coercion and the strong possibility of guilt feelings, encouraged by media sensation, being aroused in adoptees and birth parents who would worry that "someone out there" was waiting to be contacted.
The statistics of the National Council of Adoption in the United States have never shown more than 5 per cent of adoptees wanting to seek out their biological parents; but this 5 per cent, many with extremely sad stories, have been able to create considerable commotion in state legislatures across the United States in this age of "rights" by passionately calling for these, while the other 95 per cent are seldom visible for the very reason of who they are and should be simply members of a normal family with no cause celebre.
While considering "rights", shouldn't the right of a child to feel a complete security in his family reign supreme? It is my hope that Ireland will begin to look at this side of the issue before more mischief is done to the fine institution of adoption. Yours, etc.
Knocknacarra,
Galway.