What About Adoptee Confidentiality?

Adoptee rights advocates aren't here to make you feel warm and fuzzy. We bring the difficult conversations into the light. This is an integral part of our mission. We are the end users of the social construct of adoption. Whether it is to shed light on the inadequacy of current systems, or the educating of legislators on the need for greater transparency, we are here to strike up the difficult conversations.  

Among those conversations is the recent practice of agencies, both public and private, sharing very personal information of minor children on social media platforms, blogs, and websites. This practice is justified by some agencies,  saying it helps to get children into loving homes that are better equipped to provide a nurturing environment. They may also argue that it elicits a level of sympathy and can serve as a catalyst for someone who might not otherwise be looking at adoption. In an attempt to safeguard, there are regulations in place with regard to children in foster care about what shared information is permitted. However, based on a website I stumbled upon of previously adopted children, whose parents are seeking new homes for them there are no safeguards in place. The idea of the website is to provide the children with a loving home, more suited to their specific needs, since they were displaced from their adoptive homes. This is known as rehoming. Most of the posts did not include why the child was no longer welcome or suited to the original “forever family,” only that a new family was needed and the myriad of challenges the child’s behaviors presented. Many of these children were adopted from foreign countries. Many were lacking an invested parent to advocate for them. All had their personal "detriments," traumas, and disabilities displayed for the general public to see on a public site.

This is saying nothing of what was promised to the birth/first mother upon relinquishment, and what her expectations for her baby were as she sent them thousands of miles across sea and land, I urge you to ponder what happens when that child reaches adulthood. When they Google their name...visit their online story, what will they see? There is often a grieving process for an adoptee immediately following receipt of their confidential non id info (if they can get it at all). Non ID information refers to the information available to them for the adoption agency or the state about the time before they were adopted. This grieving process is normal, and receiving this information is important to an adoptee's identity development and sense of self. Now imagine the added complication of having to process that - not only were they perceived as unwanted by their [first] adoptive family, but everyone knows it. The entire internet. Googling yourself is a common activity for people today. Finding out that your very person al information is out there, for literally all to see is a major trauma. 

Forgotten in these public online posts, as is the case in many adoption customs and laws, is the fact that adopted children, like all children, grow up. They become adults. The fact that the choices regarding public disclosure of information that their guardians at the time made in haste and under duress, when they were perhaps very young children, remains relevant for their entire life. Once private information is “out there” on social media, it is public information, out of the control of it’s owner, or even the original poster. Someone who was granted authority to do what was “in the best interests of the child,” could well cause them trauma as an adult, leaving much of the earlier trauma work to unravel, decades later. We all care about children. If you are reading this, it is likely you want to do what is best. But our job isn’t to stop caring as soon as the child leaves care, or even leaves childhood. I challenge agencies, both public and private, to take a closer look at this practice. As a friend of mine so often quotes, "when we know better, we do better."