SCHOOLER, Jayne E. and Betsie L. NORRIS, JOURNEYS AFTER ADOPTION: Understanding Lifelong Issues

Abstract

SCHOOLER, Jayne E. and Betsie L. NORRIS, JOURNEYS AFTER ADOPTION: Understanding Lifelong Issues. Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey, 2002, 292 pp., $23.95 softcover.Adoption is often represented in the popular media and scholarly literature as a curious form of family life, fraught with identity issues, secrecy and shame. This notion of adoption is derived from our cultural biases in which biology inevitably trumps social environment when we consider what defines a family. It is also tied to the practices of adoption in the U.S. during the mid-Twentieth Century when unwed pregnancy and infertility were considered too shameful for public discourse, and understood as deviant from the normative family. In Journeys After Adoption: Understanding Lifelong Issues, Schooler and Norris address the complexity of adoption for its participants: birth parents, adoptees and adoptive parents. The authors accept adoption at face value and represent the range of experiences of its participants well. For the most part they are able to avoid the pitfalls of favoring biology as a superior element of family structure, but they are not always successful, particularly when they discuss the issue of searching for birth parents or children.The book begins with a critique of the consequences of secrecy, the prevailing experience of adoption in the past, conveying the shame of unwed pregnancy and infertility. There was secrecy both in the placing of infants and in their experiences once adopted. In this context, the authors emphasize the notion of psychological presence, the acknowledgment of membership in a family one might never meet. There is a section each on the adopted person, birth parents, and adoptive parents, as they explore the effects of secrecy and shame. The last part of the book addresses the issue of searching carried out by adoptees and birth families (mostly mothers). The idea of searching seems a logical outcome for mothers forced to relinquish their infants, and for children with no concrete knowledge of their biological origins. Pregnant women, mostly teens, were sent away from home to give birth, often under assumed names. Many did not see their newborns before they were taken away. Adopting parents were given little information, and records were sealed. They were discouraged from addressing adoption with their children, some of whom only found out that they were adopted after becoming adults. These experiences only compounded the shame and the shroud of mystery surrounding adoption. Thus, for these individuals, now older and middleaged, adoption carries a different meaning than for participants in adoption today, in an era of greater openness. It is important to understand the search movement in that context, and it makes sense that it would come to fruition as children adopted in mid-century arrive at middle age wanting to know more about the circumstances of their births and placements. Today, there is less secrecy and shame, though adoption is still seen by the public as inferior to biological families. While the book does not address current adoption practices to any great degree, there is brief coverage of open adoption and international adoption, much more common today than in the past.One of the strengths of the book is the use of numerous testimonies by members of the adoption triad as they describe their experiences and the relative importance of adoption in their lives. These testimonies put a human face on adoption while also showing its complexity for the participants. For example, we find that for some adoptees, searching for birth parents is paramount, while for others it is unimportant. The same applies to birth parents, some of whom are glad to be reunited, while others reject reunions. Some adoptive parents support searches while others feel threatened by them. Reunions can be happy and embracing, and also disappointing and problematic. The testimonies show us that there are a variety of attitudes toward adoption, and that people's needs change with the circintstances of their lives. …