When I look at the adopted kids I know or knew and look at the number of them that have died or had severe problems it is so out of balance with non-adopted people I know there has got to be another explanation. Well, if you were adopted and are having problems, maybe the following paper contains some answers. If you were adopted, this is meant to soothe your questions, not stir up more of them. Genetics could play a role not brought up here also. And if you are thinking of adoption now perhaps consider an open adoption (there was no choice when I was born). The following paper helped me feel “normalized”. I hope it has the same effect on you and for those not adopted perhaps this will open your minds to some of problems adoptive children may have:
Statistics on the Effects of Adoption
Appendix A
Research and Studies on Adoptees
The results are in; the great human experiment failed! The effects are hardly noticeable with some, but extremely so with others. Moreover, for those whom the system was supposedly designed to benefit, the children, were failed the most. Many adoptees do not realize that their difficulties, at least in part, stem from simply having been adopted. All adoptees have effects from their adoption experience. The degree of the effects and symptomatic behaviors vary a great deal.
There are vulnerabilities shared by all adoptees. In those most vulnerable, a distinct pattern of behaviors can be seen. Some have labeled this the “Adopted Child Syndrome.” (Kirschner)Adopted ‘children’ are disproportionately represented with learning disabilities and organic brain syndrome. (Schecter and Genetic Behaviors)
Mental health professionals are surprised at the alarmingly high number of their patients who are adopted. Studies show an average of 25 to 35% of the young people in residential treatment centers are adoptees. This is 17 times the norm. (Lifton, BIRCO–Pannor and Lawrence)
Adoptees are more likely to have difficulties with drug and alcohol abuse, as well as, eating disorders, attention deficit disorder, infertility, suicide and untimely pregnancies. (Young, Bohman, Mitchell, Ostroff, Ansfield, Lifton and Schecter)
Adoptees are more likely to choose alternate lifestyles. (Ansfield and Lifton)
Alarmingly high numbers of adoptees are sent to disciplinary/correctional schools or are locked out of their homes [adoptive]. (Anderson and Carlson)
60 to 85% of the teens at Coldwater Canyon’s Center For Personal Development, are adopted. That is 30 to 40 times the norm. The center is a private acute-care psychiatric hospital/school in Southern California. (Ostroff)
50 to 70% of the teens at The Haven in New Trier Township, Illinois, are adopted. That is 25 to 35 times the norm. The Haven is a resource center for street kids. (Henderson)
The secrecy in an adoptive family, and the denial that the adoptive family is different builds dysfunction into it. “… while social workers and insecure adoptive parents have structured a family relationship that is based on dishonesty, evasions and exploitation. To believe that good relationships will develop on such a foundation is psychologically unsound” (Lawrence). As John Bradshaw, the well-renowned therapist, says, “A family is only as sick as its secrets.”
Secrecy erects barriers to forming a healthy identity. Sealed records implicitly asks for an extreme form of denial. There is no school of psychotherapy which regards denial as a positive strategy in forming a sense of self and dealing with day-to-day realities. (Howard)
Adoption is a psychological burden to the adoptee. The effect of this burden is known, but the origin is confused. Secrecy plays a part in it, but Nancy Newton Verrier, Ph.D., sources the difficulties to the separation of the newborn from the mother. The Primal Wound is the most recent and revealing work done on the effects of adoption on the adopted. In the author’s own words, “I believe that the connection established during the nine months in utero is a profound connection, and it is my hypothesis that the severing of that connection in the original separation of the adopted child from the birth mother causes a primal or narcissistic wound, which affects the adoptee’s sense of Self and often manifests in a sense of loss, basic mistrust, anxiety and depression, emotional and/or behavioral problems, and difficulties in relationships with significant others (21).” Verrier has been criticized for her work, but her response says it all, “The only people who can really judge this work, however, are those about whom it is written: the adoptees themselves. Only they, as they note their responses to what is written here, will really know in their deepest selves the validity of this work, the existence or nonexistence of the primal wound” (xvii).
Secrecy, denial, and the primal wound have all played a role in the effect adoption has on the adoptee, but there is still more. Having spent nearly eight years studying and working as a volunteer with over 1000 people affected by an adoption (nearly all adoptees and birthmothers); I have seen the effects of adoption.
Humans have a basic need to feel they are individually whole, yet part of a whole. For the adopted this can be difficult. Often adoptees feel they do not belong (Kirschner). It is very lonely and isolating to feel different from those you should feel the closest to, your family. Edin Lipinski, M.D., brings insight to these feelings:
In an existential sense, the past is as important to adopted people as their future. It is the present that is most troublesome. Not knowing where they fit into the spectrum of happenings is a great problem for them.
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The above page was an appendix to a paper written by Ginni D. Snodgrass for PSY/SWK-495 credits at George Fox University in 1998. These appendices only respond to the frequent questions about adoptees’ and birthmothers’ psychological well-being. Why do adoptees and birth families need to search and have a reunion? References section
Note from Tom Rees: I have separated the birth mother’s section of the appendix for a later post. To see it now click here. My history, which is far less interesting than the work that precedes it follows. The basic premise is — with a perfect life on the outside, how could I have been prone to a mood disorder which almost ran me off the tracks? There is no good reason for me to have gone to hell and back, and taken my poor parents for the ride. The above explanation is the only one that has ever hit home with me that might explain, at least in part, why I had a mood disorder.
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There is no reason on God’s green earth why any problems should have beset me. I am probably the luckiest guy in the world from the standpoint of having been adopted. I was adopted into a loving, caring family whose parents love one another, and who I love more dearly than I could ever express. My father is an amazing role model — a self-made legend in the field of medicine. Almost single-handedly he has become known as “the Grandfather of Plastic Surgery”, and in the same lifetime he co-founded “The Flying Doctors” of East Africa beginning in 1957. That effort, which was conceived by my Dad and two other doctors and involved him giving several months out of each year to work in Africa flying around the bush taking care of Masai and other local tribes, is now the largest non-governmental health care organization in all of Africa. In 2005 it received the first investment made anywhere in the country of Africa by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in the form of their Award for Global Health, and it has received numerous others. Visit “The African Medical and Research Foundation” at AMREF.org.. Award pictures are HERE. My Father’s background is HERE.
Equally amazing as their professional lives (my Mother spent much of her free time in life raising money for AMREF) are their personal lives. It is pretty incredible to see them alive and as well as you could expect 83 year olds to be, and to be totally in love with one another. How many 83 year olds do you see holding hands as much as these two do? I was honored to be able to give a toast several years ago at their 80th birthday party and 60th wedding anniversary, 2 “bashes” rolled up into 1. I believe there were some 120 guests there who are considered their “closest friends”. It is a story that is as close to a fairy tale as one could imagine.
On the other side of my lucky coin, I have been fortunate enough to find my birth mother. And as if that wasn’t enough, she married my birth father and had two really cool kids, so it turns out I have a whole birth family. While my birth father died early from alcoholism – I basically have another family I discovered that is made up of the same genetic “stuff” as me. They welcomed me with open arms, love, and joy, and getting to know them has been a gift from God. After having met them the first time I said to my then wife, ” You know, I feel like all my life I have been a satellite — and I just landed.”
So what on earth could I have to complain about, and with a loving family having raised me and given me the gift of such an amazing life, what could ever have caused me to have a multi-year depression that almost derailed my life? And what could they (my adopted parents) think? Did they fail me somewhere? Not one bit. Ever. But I also had a brother who was adopted and was an alcoholic with severe mood disorders who they had to move out of the house to preserve their marriage. He ended up committing suicide. I have a wonderful sister who was adopted who has as normal a life as anybody — but that’s 2 out of 3 “ill” kids? I feel I have put my parents (whenever I refer to my parents I obviously mean my adopted parents, as they raised me) through hell sometimes. And I was adopted into the perfect family. How could 66% or 2 of 3 of the kids not be “normal” children under the circumstances of how great a life we had? How could this be? Are the answers in the explanation above? I feel that they are, in part.
Add to the psychological explanation above a genetic component. If two people “got it on” in the heat of the moment and were not using protection, what is the likelihood that alcohol was involved with the event? I think probably pretty high, and those genes were passed along to those babies who had to be given up. Combine the propensity for alcohol with the potential psychological trauma of immediate separation with the birth mother and days of being “between parents”, if one could call that trauma, and perhaps you have the makings for problems too deep to fully comprehend — but which the hard numbers seem to bear out later in life.
