Jigsaw puzzle-right of adopted person to put pieces together

Press, 22 August 1979, Page 17

Jigsaw puzzle-right of adopted person to put pieces together

Adoption records are not open for inspection. But a small, vocal group of people believe that after a child has reached the age of 18, all those involved in an adoption order should, of right, have access to the original birth certificate. Many people find it hard to understand why an adopted person would wish to trace his or her natural parents. VICKI FUREY, who started researching the adoption story at the beginning of the year, was among the puzzled at the outset. Now, six months and many conversations later, she has begun to under* stand an adopted person’s pressing need to know — to answer the questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? To find, in fact, that missing link in the jigsaw puzzle. This is the first of her reports. The second and final report will be published tomorrow.

Adoption is a “legalised game of make believe,” says Diane Dixon, founder of the Christchurch Adoption Support Group. A girl pretends that she did not "give up” a child for adoption. Other people "require her” to pretend that it never happened. The adoptive parents pretend that the child is their natural child. The child pretends that they are natural parents. Even the law regards the child as the natural offspring of the adoptive parents. Last February, the first public meeting of Jigsaw was held in Christchurch. Jigsaw had been running in Auckland for some time. The Christchurch group has since changed its name to the Christchurch Adoption Support Group but the aim remains the same: to press for changes in the Secrecy Clause of the 1955 Adoption Act: clause 23. About 50 • people attended that first meeting in Aldersgate, all a little nervous, some a little ashamed. Among the group were mothers who had given up children for adoption, adoptive parents, and adult adoptees. The group in Christchurch now has a “solid core” which believes that "all parties involved in an adoption order should have access to their original birth certificates, after the child has reached the age of 18,” Mrs Dixon says. Mrs Dixon believes that the adoption law in New Zealand should be based on the English system which is the result of the 1975 Children’s Act, and the 1976 Adoption Act. Since November 26, 1976, any English adoptee, over the age of’ 18 years, can obtain, of right, a copy of the original birth certificate provided he or she attends at least one counselling session, from an approved agency. This is to ensure that the „ adoptee has “considered the possible effect of any inquiries,’ both on himself and others.” Scotland has had an open registry of births, for adoptees over 17 years, since 1930; Finland has

allowed people access to their birth registration for a long time; and Israel adopted this policy in the 19605. At present it is very difficult for New Zealand adoptees tp trace their birth parents. Jigsaw in Auckland has a central register and claims . to have successfully reunited at least 15 adoptees with their birth mothers, Mrs Dixon says. This only works if both parties join the register. The chances of both doing so are slim. A few adoptees manage to trace their birth parents by acting on information that their adoptive parents were given at the time of the adoption. The only other way is to apply to the Magistrate’s or Supreme Court, and prove that there is a “special ground” for allowing inspection of a person’s adoption record. But that takes time and money; and there is no guarantee of success. A North Canterbury man, and his lawyer, took two years to prepare a case which was recently presented to the Christchurch Magistrate’s Court. That application succeeded. However, one earlier in the year, in the same court, was refused. Two successful applications have gone through the Wellington courts; two presented to the Auckland courts, in the last three years, have been refused. There may have been more applications but this information is difficult to find out as applications are filed in separate courts throughout the country. All applications go through the Domestic Proceedings Court and cannot be reported without leave of the court. In cases where applications have been granted magistrates usually stipulate that the records can be inspected only by a person acting as an intermediary, and then only if all parties agree can contact be made. •Even so there is no guarantee that an adoptee will get all that he is looking for. Before 1955 adoptions could be made through a number of

people and agencies, including doctors, lawyers, and the Social Welfare Department. The department says that its records of adoptions made before 1960 are "fairly scanty.” The file of a person adopted before then could be lying in some dusty, forgotten corner of a lawyer’s office, making it almost impossible to trace. The least a person can find out is his or her birth mother’s name, which is on the original birth certificate.

Diane Dixon believes that intermediaries should be used where contact is being made between an adoptee and a birth parent. “I certainly do not hold with someone arriving on a person’s doorstep saying ‘Hello mother, I’m your long lost daughter.’ That would send anyone into quite a tizz.” Contact has to be made with the agreement of both parties — the birth parent and the adoptee, Mrs Dixon says. "If the intermediary finds that one of the parties does not want to be contacted then we respect those wishes.” The “bible” for these people pressing for change in the adoption law is a book of pioneer research, “In Search of Origins,”

which was written by Dr John Triseliotis, the father of two adopted children and a senior . lecturer in social administration at Edinburgh University. It was largely as a result of Dr Triseliotis’s research that the British adoption law was changed. Between December, 1969, and December, 1970, he undertook a study of 70, people who sought to trace their natural parents through the Scottish registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. His research showed that adopted persons needed to know about their natural parents; for these the kn owledge was the missing link in the jigsaw puzzle. If children were told the truth about their adoption, from an early age, then the bond between the adoptive parent and child was cemented, he found. Of those Dr Triseliotis studied many had been denied knowledge of their adopted status and had found out only when they were grown up. Often, a crisis in the adoptive home — the death of an adoptive parent, or the expectation of an adoptee’s own child, a pending marriage, separation, or divorce — triggered the search for the natural parents. The most severe reactions came from crisis which carried a sense of loss, rejection, or abandonment.

Only about one per cent of the adopted population would want to search for their natural parents, Dr Triseliotis found. Half of these merely wante.d more information. However, this group was very unhappy, and unless they knew more about their origins they could not be at peace with themselves. It seems that the more information the adoptive parents can make available to the child, the less likely it is that the child, in later life will want to search for the natural parents.

chological need and rarely to a matter-of-fact attitude,” Dr Triseliotis wrote.

The adoptees who were generally satisfied with their home life, and who had a “more positive self image,” were hoping to obtain information that would help to complete themselves, “to tie up the loose ends." They were not interested in meeting their natural parents. "It would be like two strangers meeting,” one adoptee said.

Those wanting to meet their natural parents shared a number of “negative factors” — an unsatisfactory home life, a negative self image, genealogical information had been withheld, or given in a hostile way, and they had not been placed for adoption until more than a year of age. However, Dr Triseliotis did find that most of the adoptees still had “warm feelings” for their adopparents. “They were the only parents they knew and most of their feelings and thoughts were for the people who brought them up.”

The Rev. Keith Griffith, of Wellington, who has acted as an intermediary for a number of adoptees contacting their natural parents, estimates that there were more than 90,000 adoptees living in New Zealand in 1977. If the New Zealand adoption law was changed tomorrow, so that it was similar to the British law, Keith Griffith estimates that only 0.84 per cent of total eligible adoptees will have made contact with a birth parent by 1988. His estimate is based on data from England and assumes that applications remain at a constant one per cent per year.

Diane Dixon says that if "all goes well” — that is, if the adoption law is changed — and that if society takes a more “open attitude” to adoption, then the Christ-r'-m-ch Adnntion Support Group will eventually .. itseit out of a job."

“For the vast number of adopteees the impulse to search was in response to some deeply felt, psy-