If my father had seen me, what would he have done?

So I’ve been following this TV soapie (we all have our weaknesses, and this is mine). In it, a woman (let’s call her Jane) has a relationship with a man (Dick) and falls pregnant. After much soul searching she decides to keep the baby, even though Dick doesn’t want her to, and even offers to pay for an abortion.

Enter a good friend of Jane’s (who, in true soapie style, is also secretly in love with her). He (Tom) not only offers to marry Jane, but also publicly accept responsibility for fathering her baby. He also negotiates an agreement with Dick to adopt the baby. So far, so good.

Until the baby is born. It’s a girl. Dick goes out of his way to avoid visiting mother and baby in hospital, but then something comes up and he has no choice but to go. While there he gets to see his child and even hold her for a few minutes while Jane takes a call on her mobile. Father and daughter share a bonding moment.

Later, Tom presents Dick with the adoption forms, but is taken aback when Dick asks for more time before signing them. Reluctantly, however, he agrees. While perusing the forms Dick reads the following line: “the parent shall relinquish all rights to the child”. A light goes on. He realises that he cannot sign away all rights to his daughter. While Jane was pregnant with her he was able to convince himself that she was an abstract entity. But since holding her in his arms, everything has changed. He finally decides not to sign the adoption papers.

Watching all this unfold on my television set I felt my chest slowly begin to constrict until eventually I had to rub it in an attempt to ease the tightness. It’s what usually happens when an adoption issue touches me on a personal level.

When my birth mother told my biological father she was pregnant with me he left her. She never saw him again.

I often wonder whether he ever wonders what happened to the girl he got pregnant back in ‘63. Does he wonder whether she had the baby? Whether it was a boy or a girl? Or did he forget about the whole episode, as my birth mother told me he probably did? I have asked several men if they would be able to forget about an unplanned pregnancy they had been party to and the answer is always an unequivocal no.

Back then it was not uncommon for men not to want to face responsibility for an unplanned pregnancy. South African birth mothers were not legally required to name the father of their baby, nor was the father’s legal consent required, as it is today, for the baby to be given up for adoption.

But I can’t help wondering… If my father had stuck around while my birth mother was pregnant and then visited the hospital where I was born – would the sight of me have caused him change his mind?

Would he have wanted to know me, perhaps even to keep me?

Would he have wanted his name on my birth certificate?

Or would he have decided to walk away anyway?

A fundamental human right

It’s hard to believe that in some American states adoptees are still being denied access to their birth records. This sad fact was recently again brought home to me when one of my Facebook friends (and a fellow adoptee) published a link to a young woman’s petition in which she asks for help in finding her birth mother because the state of Texas sealed adoptee birth records when she was born.

That certain states in a first world country such as America continue to enforce such archaic legislation a decade into the 21st century is mind-blowing. What is their rationale? Who are they trying to protect? Certainly not the child. To know who fathered you and who gave birth to you is a fundamental human right and it should be up to you to decide whether you want access to that information or not. For legislators to make a blanket decision on adoptees’ behalf is a far cry from democracy, to say the least.

The justification that to keep the records sealed is ‘in the best interests of the child’ has long ago been found to be wanting. Thankfully many countries, mine included, are trying to correct this grave mistake. In South Africa the records were unsealed in 1987, enabling countless adoptees to finally obtain at least some answers to the many never-ending questions they have about their birth.

To deny human beings access to information about their birth is nothing short of barbaric. It creates a wound that cannot heal, but only continues to fester, often to the extent that it invades all aspects of the adoptee’s life. Yes, the information that lies within the folders of one’s birth records can lead to painful disclosures, but I speak from personal experience when I say it is better to have a painful truth to deal with once and for all than to contend with ongoing speculation and fantasies. Sometimes the only way to heal a wound is to throw salt on it.

I wasted no time in signing Kim’s petition. If you’re reading this blog, regardless of whether or not you’re an adoptee, I hope that my words will compel you to sign it too.

Review by Ian Hughes

If ever I have read a cri de coeur this is it. The author, at the ripe old age of 37, discovered she had been adopted as a baby. Although the revelation came as a hammer blow, finally confirming her deepest suspicions, it only reinforced her determination to find out who she was, who her real mother and father were, and why she had been given up for adoption. The author is an accomplished journalist and made copious notes of her feelings and the events surrounding her determined search for her identity.

Someone’s Daughter then, is the record of that journey and details not only her anguish at finally finding out that she had been rejected at birth by her birth mother, but also how she was finally able to come to terms with the truth of her own birth.

All her life she had been tormented by her suspicions. Indeed, even as a child she fantasised about the possibility – or in her worst moments – the probability of being adopted, which over time became an intolerable emotional millstone, a cancer gnawing away inside her which came close to destroying everything she held dear.

Like most other non-adoptees, which I suspect is most of us, I had scant idea of the trauma that the prospect, or even the possibility, of being adopted induces in a child. I had always assumed – if indeed I had ever given it any thought – that the adopted child and her adoptive family celebrated their mutual love more or less on a daily basis, and if the child was made aware of its adoption, why perhaps a mild curiosity was aroused as to the circumstances surrounding its adoption. Not so, not at all. The need to know, everything, becomes paramount, overriding every other consideration, and in the author’s case, even her family was sacrificed at the altar of perceived rejection, and on her perceived lack of identity.

Crippled by ongoing uncertainty, she became depressed, seriously depressed, medically depressed, unable at times even to get out of bed, unable to do the simplest things for herself. Her family, her husband and her son and daughter, were caught up in this emotional roller coaster, unable to fully understand, they suffered, daily witnessing a beloved wife and mother in a near catatonic state of tearful collapse. And unable to help, they also cried.

Even when she finally finds out who her mother is and meets her after a lifetime of separation, and establishes the reason for her adoption, she still has to learn to let go. That she finally does is the happy climax of the book. Only then could the emotional healing start, and no doubt the overwhelming and glorious relief of her husband and children, not to mention her adoptive parents, who the author is at pains to point out she loves very much, indeed she couldn’t have wished for better parents.

It is a harrowing tale told exceptionally well. Although at times the tone is slightly hysterical, its honesty is fearsome, and even the despair is tangible. Nevertheless, throughout the tale runs the glittering thread of her strong Christian faith. And it is this redemptive faith which she shares with her husband and family that gives her – and them – the support that makes them all whole again.

If you’re adopted, read it, if you know any adoptees pass it on to them. It might just spare them the author’s own Dantesque journey into hell and back.