Should adoptees be able to acquire their original birth certificates so they can search for their birth families

[fncceo]

in 93% of the time they are glad to be together again

I suspect your self-serving “statistic” might have been pulled directly out of your rectum.

No one I ever met would be overjoyed to have an obese, blue-haired, septum-pierced, kid with abandonment issues showing up at my front door looking for me to sort out their life.

But, feel free to publish your raw data and prove me wrong.

 

[Unkotare]

....

Further my research shows that infants a day old can make long term memory......

Gimme a break. I can't even do that yet.

 

[fncceo]

You sound like a liberal.

Total devotion to a single issue - check

The intractable feeling that they’re always right despite any facts presented - check

Outbursts of anger when anyone questions their assumptions - check


Looks like we’ve got a liberal here.

 

[braalian]

The only way an adoptee should be able to access any records revealing the identity of their birth birth mother is if the mother gives consent.

Adoptees can submit a mutual consent form that the state or adoption agency or whatever relevant institution can forward to the mother. The mother can then either consent or decline to be identified.

Under no circumstances should an adopted child be able to access such records without consent from the mother.

 

[Hafar1014]

Gimme a break. I can't even do that yet.

Infants are born with a functioning Limbic system. Their memory is not verbal or explicit. Its held and recalled as emotion. We refer to it as an affective memory representation. If we couldnt make memory we couldnt learn and grow.

 

[JohnDB]

Having some knowledge about this....

That 93%....gonna question that statistic right there.
Often it's the mother's being glad....not their offspring.
Because you cant "un-know" something. Adult Infant adoptees usually find out bio-mom was a nut and want nothing to do with her once meeting her.

Older child adoptions? Different story.
These children were so traumatized by birth parents that they are usually unhinged as adults. These adult children will associate with people they know to be destructive to themselves....and seek out birth mothers FOR THE DESTRUCTIVE LIFESTYLE.

But.....
With the advent of DNA ancestry testing.....no such thing as hiding from giving up a child for adoption. They can and will find any relatives alive. More than a few families have found out that one sibling is only a half sibling instead of full...or that they have more half siblings than they believed.

 

[Hafar1014]

Having some knowledge about this....

That 93%....gonna question that statistic right there.
Often it's the mother's being glad....not their offspring.
Because you cant "un-know" something. Adult Infant adoptees usually find out bio-mom was a nut and want nothing to do with her once meeting her.

Older child adoptions? Different story.
These children were so traumatized by birth parents that they are usually unhinged as adults. These adult children will associate with people they know to be destructive to themselves....and seek out birth mothers FOR THE DESTRUCTIVE LIFESTYLE.

But.....
With the advent of DNA ancestry testing.....no such thing as hiding from giving up a child for adoption. They can and will find any relatives alive. More than a few families have found out that one sibling is only a half sibling instead of full...or that they have more half siblings than they believed.

Im a therapist specializing in adoption and an independent researcher. I have also mediated many reunions. Iwas president of the adoption forum in Phila, state rep for American Adoption Congress and expert witness fr NJ Care. The 93% is from a Pew poll. In my experience only one mother refused contact from all the searches I did.

Often birth mothers do have mental issues and I mediated those reunions successfully. A mediator is the key to a successful outcome. Even when adoptees discover things about their birth mother they dont like they can experience closure.

Your beliefs are far from the truth

Robert Hafetz - Profile on Academia.edu

Robert Allan Hafetz was born January 28, 1951, in the Door of Hope Salvation Army Booth Home, in Jersey City, New Jersey. A late in life graduate of Temple…

independent.academia.edu

 

[1srelluc]

No birth mother should be hunted down by a kid (or some crusading NGO/Nonprofit) that she put up for adoption.

 

[Hafar1014]

No birth mother should be hunted down by a kid (or some crusading NGO/Nonprofit) that she put up for adoption.

Most birth mothers want to be found. I have mediated many reunions and helped with many searches. The outcomes are very positive and healing allowing old wounds to heal and closure.

 

[1srelluc]

Most birth mothers want to be found. I have mediated many reunions and helped with many searches. The outcomes are very positive and healing allowing old wounds to heal and closure.

Oh is that so?

So you take it upon yourself to hound a birth mother in the hope of a positive outcome?

I knew you were an "odd" sort and I bet you won't talk of the outcomes that were not positive.

 

[Hafar1014]

Oh is that so?

So you take it upon yourself to hound a birth mother in the hope of a positive outcome?

I knew you were an "odd" sort and I bet you won't talk of the outcomes that were not positive.

They are grateful when contacted. How many reunions have you done? Only one refused contact. Her other son wanted to meet his brother. Every outcome is positive.

 

[1srelluc]

They are grateful when contacted. How many reunions have you done? Only one refused contact. Her other son wanted to meet his brother. Every outcome is positive.

 

[Hafar1014]

How many reunions have you done? What do you actually know?

 

[JohnDB]

Im a therapist specializing in adoption and an independent researcher. I have also mediated many reunions. Iwas president of the adoption forum in Phila, state rep for American Adoption Congress and expert witness fr NJ Care. The 93% is from a Pew poll. In my experience only one mother refused contact from all the searches I did.

Often birth mothers do have mental issues and I mediated those reunions successfully. A mediator is the key to a successful outcome. Even when adoptees discover things about their birth mother they dont like they can experience closure.

Your beliefs are far from the truth

Robert Hafetz - Profile on Academia.edu

Robert Allan Hafetz was born January 28, 1951, in the Door of Hope Salvation Army Booth Home, in Jersey City, New Jersey. A late in life graduate of Temple…

independent.academia.edu

Now you know just as well as I do that birth mothers are VERY different from the children. The children as young adults still require time to process their own thoughts....and this is something that requires time as it is a very complicated set of emotions to process. Those adopted as older children may never process emotions and feelings appropriately due to the trauma inflicted upon them by their birth mothers.

 

[Hafar1014]

Now you know just as well as I do that birth mothers are VERY different from the children. The children as young adults still require time to process their own thoughts....and this is something that requires time as it is a very complicated set of emotions to process. Those adopted as older children may never process emotions and feelings appropriately due to the trauma inflicted upon them by their birth mothers.

I am an adoptee and trauma therapist. I wrote the book on adoption related trauma. Trauma can be healed whether its preverbal infant trauma or adult adoptees still needing therapy. I have treated over 800 adoptive families and adoptees. Adoptees cant process their memories, thoughts is the wrong term. They need help. Ill give you the process then a link to all my published papers. You need to be informed

This is the neuropsychology used to heal any kind of trauma. Taken from my paper The Process of Change in Adoption
“Due to the entirely nonverbal nature of the limbic brain, experiential rather then cognitive methods are required for successfully engaging and changing its schemas.” (Ecker, B., 2011). “A dynamic neural process now known as reconsolidation can actually unlock the synapses maintaining implicit emotional learnings” (Nader, K., et al. 2000). (Pansskepp, J., 1998). The amygdala compares current perceptions to these attachment related implicit memories triggering a self-protective response. When the child is at his/her worst behavior an opportunity for healing is created only if caregivers understand what is happening as a process. One can see how difficult this can be because the normal response by caregivers is counterintuitive. So then what is the solution?

“Further research has established that in order for synapses to unlock, the brain requires not just the experience of reactivation of the memory—it's also necessary for a second, critical experience to promptly take place while the memory reactivation experience is still occurring. That second experience consists of perceptions that sharply contradict and disconfirm the implicit expectations of the reactivated memory.

(1) Fully reactivate the target implicit memory so that the emotional experience is occurring.

(2) While the target memory is fully reactivated and the emotional experience is occurring, promptly create an additional, concurrent experience that sharply mismatches (contradicts and disconfirms) the expectations and predictions arising from the implicit memory.”(Ecker, B.2010, Psychotherapy Networker

Robert Hafetz - Profile on Academia.edu

Robert Allan Hafetz was born January 28, 1951, in the Door of Hope Salvation Army Booth Home, in Jersey City, New Jersey. A late in life graduate of Temple…

independent.academia.edu

 

[Meathead]

Most states still seal original birth certificates form adoptees. Several US states allow adoptees access to their original birth certificates, but the specific laws and procedures vary. Ten states, including Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island, offer adoptees unrestricted access. I was an expert witness testifying in NJ which has opened its records for adoptees.

Fighting this was the Catholic Church, the ACLU, adoption lawyers, anti abortion groups, and the Mormons.
For open records was NJ Care a coalition of adoptees and birth mothers. We fought a 32 year battle and beat them at every hearing. I was in the fight for 15 years.

The Oregon Supreme Court ruled there is no right of privacy in adoption. One argument is birth mother privacy assuming they dont want to be known after they surrender their child. There is no law that supports this and often social workers will make this false claim. Research shows 93% want to be found by the children they gave away and in many cases were manipulated to give up at a time when they were vulnerable.

The UN treaty of the child states every human being has right to know their ethnic history.

Further my research shows that infants a day old can make long term memory. When premature maternal separation occurs the infant records a preverbal trauma memory for life that will alter development. We remember out=r mothers of origin and most of us long to find her again. We should have that right

BCs can be issued without the names of the parents. If the parent/s wish, at any time, their name/s be disclosed on a request, that too should be honored.

 

[1srelluc]

How many reunions have you done? What do you actually know?

I know of at least one that was not very positive.

Wife's niece adopted a Pali baby....Kid grows up enjoying the benefits an upper middle class lifestyle that adoptive mom and dad provide. Wants for nothing, very popular as she had knock-out looks.

Kid becomes a young woman ready to enter college and wants to know her birth background....Adoptive mom and dad tell her.....Big mistake!

Kid (now a legal adult) gets radicalized, drops out of college, and makes her way to "Palestine" and renounces her US citizenship, then proceeds to spit out kids for the cause.

As far as anyone knows she's under a pile of rubble somewhere.

 

[Hafar1014]

BCs can be issued without the names of the parents. If the parent/s wish, at any time, their name/s be disclosed on a request, that too should be honored.

That varies by state. Most states dont have that requirement. I can tell you NJ does not because I was part of the the writing of that law. If the birth name isnt there its worthless. We already get an amended copy of a birth record

 

[Hafar1014]

Infants are born with a functioning Limbic system. Their memory is not verbal or explicit. Its held and recalled as emotion. We refer to it as an affective memory representation. If we couldnt make memory we couldnt learn and grow.

Science proves you wrong. I love when they post I disagree but cant post a thought
Infants only a few days old can record long term memories. “Infants do not think but they do process emotions and long term memories are stored as affective schemas” (Geansbauer, 2002). An infant separated from its first mother will record a memory of that event. Memories of this nature are called preverbal memory representations and they have a unique quality that must be understood by adoptive parents. “Infant memories are recalled in adulthood the same way they were recorded at the time they occurred. It is difficult possibly impossible for children to map newly acquired verbal skills on to existing preverbal memory representations” (Richardson, R., & Hayne, H. 2007). An older adoptee who recalls an emotional memory will experience it the same way it was felt as an infant. Adoptees can have troubling memories that they cannot identify in words. This means that they cannot understand what they are feeling and without a vocabulary they cannot even ask for help. This leads to a cognitive /emotional disconnection. “Children fail to translate their preverbal memories into language”(Simcock, Hayne, 2002).
References

Gaensbauer, T. (2002). Representations of trauma in infancy: Clinical and theoretical

implications. 23(3), 259-277. doi:10.1002/imhj.10020.

Lierberman, & Pawl, (1988). Clinical applications of attachment theory. In J. Belsky & T.

Nezworski, (Eds.), Clinical implications of attachment ( 327-351). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Richardson, R. & Hayne H. (2007). You Can't Take It With You: The translation of memory

across development. Current directions in, psychological science, 16, 223 - 227.

Schore, A.N. (2001). The effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development,

affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant mental mental health journal, 22, 7-66.

Simcock, G., Hayne, H. (2002). Children fail to translate their preverbal memories into language.

American Psychological Society 13(3), 225-231.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

It might have been here or another board where an adult child,tracked down a birth mother and was met with a barrage of fury so intense that she was afraid of being physically hurt.

I can only imagine how I would feel at having my privacy ripped away. Not good. Have a centralized agency where children who want to find and mothers who want to be found can register. Don't track women down as if they were fugitives.