Australia, like several other western countries, is home to many intercountry and transracial adopted people taken into local families over the past fifty years. Similar to other adopted people, these intercountry adoptees are likely, at some point in their adult lives, to seek their personal information, want to explore their origins and, where possible, find and meet original kin.

Generally, little is known about the searching experiences and their impacts on intercountry adoptees. Lynelle Long, herself an intercountry and transracial adoptee with origins in Vietnam, is a long term advocate for intercountry adoptees having founded the Intercountry Adoptee Support Network (ICASN) in Sydney in 1998, an ongoing entity now known as InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV).

Recently, Lynelle compiled and released an engaging ICAV Perspective Paper of over 40 intercountry adoptee search and reunion stories, including her own, with the experiences covering 14 sending and 10 receiving countries.

These personal accounts reveal why intercountry adoptees search, the impacts of search and reunion on their lives and they provide useful suggestions about what could be done to make future pathways easier and more helpful for others who embark on similar journeys.

What emerges from these individual stories is that adoption is not a single event that happens early in a child’s life and can then be forgotten. More realistically, adoption is an ongoing event in an adopted person’s life requiring validation, recognition, consideration and, as their life unfolds, support through readily accessible and available services.

 

Why do intercountry and transracial adoptee’s search?

Searching essentially involves three things: seeking out personal information, the desire to find and meet first kin and to address deeper concerns of connection and belonging. For example:

Factual personal information – when and where I was born? What were the names of my mother, father and any other family members? Was I given a name at birth? What were the circumstances resulting in me being abandoned or presented for adoption? This information is not only important to the adopted person but also to their own children where they go on to have families of their own.

Medical information – what is my medical history? Do I have a predisposition to any hereditary diseases? Is it possible that I will pass any illness on to my own children? Many an adopted person lives with unknown or lost genetic and medical history. This is neither comforting nor helpful when a medical practitioner asks: do you know of any health issues running in your family?

Psychological development – the complex factors that relate to a broader sense of self, identity, connection and belonging. A general curiosity of who and what I am? Of where do I fit in? These factors are critical for developing an integrated and meaningful sense of self to sustain healthy well being.

Relational – What is my place in the world? What is the relationship with my original language, culture, country and family? Knowledge that is important to understand and naturally grieve for the first losses of mother, family, language and culture and to assist with healthy ongoing relationships.

What obstacles or challenges do intercountry adoptees encounter along the way?

The individual stories reveal that intercountry adopted people soon learn, not withstanding the advances in technology and social media, both of which have opened multiple search pathways in recent times, that finding personal information or first families is like running an obstacle course. A process that requires determination, resilience and creativity to overcome, or work around, the many barriers they encounter along the way.

From their stories we learn that these obstacles or roadblocks, some internal and others external, often involve:

Timing – when to search? This is a decision each adopted person has to resolve depending on their own needs and circumstances. There is no single right moment or answer – it is an individual decision and choice.

Pacing the search – There is no guarantee that any information or kin will be found. Some authors found their information/families very quickly, others more slowly. Some not at all. As with the timing of searches and reunions, pacing is a personal choice as to how hard or fast people set out to find information, acknowledging that seldom does the adopted person ever have complete control over the process.

Missing language – as intercountry adoptees seldom grow up or are taught their mother tongue, the absence or any proficiency in original home language becomes a major issue in their search and reunion process when dealing with government bureaucracies, middle-men or when meeting or trying to establish a relationship with original kin.

Geographical distance – given most sending countries reside in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa or South America and most receiving countries are in Europe, UK, North America, Australia or New Zealand physical distance is an obstacle intercountry adoptees constantly face when searching or engaging in reunions. This requires frequent travel that does become costly.

Where to go for help? Given the range of sending countries, many with rudimentary or fragmented record keeping services or a lack of openness to provide information, the adoptees often speak about uncertainty in who to turn to begin their search, many stumbling through processes that waste time, deplete financial resources and tax emotional energy.

It’s not surprising then that the ways they seek information is diverse covering anything from: private visits to a sending country; archival searches; engaging private detectives; contacting government departments or social agencies in sending or receiving countries; using online groups and social media; DNA testing, volunteering as guests on television shows dedicated to finding lost family to seeking help from fellow adoptees and/or inter-country adoption support groups.

What they find or don’t find may also lead to additional challenges, with positive or negative consequences. Some notable examples include:

  • Additional personal information becomes available or their information cannot be found or it is discovered not to be their own
  • First mothers are found while others claiming to be their mother turn out not to be
  • One sibling finds their original information or family while another does not
  • Some original family’s welcome contact while others do not
  • An adoptee finds an original family member even when deemed least likely e.g. in China

Outcomes are equally diverse with some acknowledging a better sense of who they are; of finding their place in the world; joyful at being welcomed; gaining a heightened appreciation of their original culture and country of birth; feeling a sense of empowerment and greater control over their lives.

Others lie betwixt and between not feeling comfortable in either family or country; strangers to themselves and the families they live in or have found; some resentful of the racism and isolation they experienced growing up or deeply angry at being taken in by abusive adoptive parents when other siblings had remained with their original family’s and received good care.

What improvements could be made to processes or services to smooth future pathways?

Many suggestions are put forward to improve processes or to create services to make search and reunion easier and more supportive of intercountry adopted people’s ongoing needs. A selective list in no particular order includes:

  • An overall duty of care towards adopted people, not just as babies/children but as adults having to deal with the ongoing consequences of separation and loss
  • Access to all personal information – a basic human right for all adopted people
  • Resolution of privacy issues to allow adopted people access to their personal information
  • Removal of minimum age thresholds that limit access to personal information
  • Creation and access to integrated databases for effective and efficient searching
  • Single points of entry for support services
  • Language and translation services particularly in sending countries
  • Counselling services that facilitate search and reunion processes from beginning to end
  • Engagement of trained and empathetic staff across all countries
  • Regular publication of intercountry adoptee search and reunion stories for others to learn from
  • Adoptee mentor programmes to utilise the experiences of intercountry adoptees who have conducted search and reunion
  • Cultural exchange programs for intercountry adoptees
  • Financial scholarships to assist intercountry adoptees
  • Compulsory sessions for prospective adoptive parents, including having to spend a least two months in the country of origin before adopting
  • Tighter controls and monitoring to prevent exploitation of children and illegal or unethical adoption practices
  • Support for original parents left behind in sending countries – where they are informed of their rights, provided with financial support or employment opportunities to enable families to stay together and not lose their children.

The list highlights the need for much more to be done to support adoptees particularly in coordinating services and in service provision in sending countries.

Notable among the stories is a quarter of the authors have established advocacy or activist groups or organisations to promote or lobby for the interests and needs of inter-country adoptees with some questioning the validity of intercountry adoption as an ongoing practice. Given the valuable role these groups play they too are deserving of funding along with traditional recipients of government funding.

I myself, as an advocate for family preservation as a first principle, believe greater support and services do need to be provided to intercountry adoptees, not to encourage or increase intercountry adoption rates, but to acknowledge that intercountry adoptees, like all adopted people have a right to all their personal information, need support in sourcing it and in locating first kin, and to have access to counselling services that assist them in dealing with loss and disconnection.

Traditionally, as Lynelle Long reminds us, so much of adoption is framed by the formal adoption transaction at the beginning of a person’s life with little, if any, attention given to the long term effects, or needs of the adopted person, as their lives unfold. This needs to change as the ICAV anthology highlights the multiple layers of the ongoing adoptive experience where psychological, emotional, financial, social and inter-generational impacts continue to mark adoptee lives as they grapple with core questions about their existence, identity, place in the world and the impact their adoption has on themselves and their families, whether original, adoptive or the ones they go on to create.

Within the Australian context it is encouraging to note that in recent months two new services are being offered. LifeWorks Relationship Counselling and Education Services has started a free, nationwide Intercountry Adoption Family Support Service focused on post placement counselling support and case management services for families formed by inter-country adoption. To access this service call the Intercountry Adoption Support Coordinator on 1300 543 396 or via email icasupport@lifeworks.com.au. This service is delivered in partnership with International Social Service (ISS) Australia.

Note that the above service is for general counselling and not trauma counselling nor is it for search and reunion. Parallel to this service ISS Australia have begun a free Intercountry Adoption Tracing and Reunification Service, offered face-to-face, via telephone or online for intercountry adoptees wishing to begin searching for their personal records or first families in their country of origin. Those who are interested can contact ISS by telephoning 1300 657 843 or via email ica@iss.org.au.

Both services are funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Social Services.

The original ICAV paper of search and reunion can be found at: https://intercountryadopteevoices.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/search-and-reunion-icav-perspectives-july-2016-v1.pdf

Image credit:

Who will take care of me? Watercolour and pencil on arches paper by Gabby Malpas, Intercountry adoptee with Chinese ancestry.

Gabby provided this information about her painting:

“In the years that I have been developing a relationship with my birth mother I have frequently asked to meet and know her children – my siblings. This has been refused – there is fear of reprisals and discord within her family. I have respected this but remained hurt for many years. As the years pass I continue questioning this. I have a family and my own life. And given the circumstances of my birth – well, it’s a question that I don’t feel I have the right to ask. Adoption is complicated and bittersweet.

The four tulips represent myself and my siblings. The tiny bud represents the child my birth mother said she wanted to adopt once, to replace me. The pink tulips symbolise care. I’m learning to care more about my mother’s feelings than push for my own gratification”.

Thomas Graham

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