Adult Adoptee Health Survey

Are you a female adoptee at least 40 years of age? If so, you're invited to participate in an important research study about how adopted persons take care of their health.

A perfect opportunity for adoptees to speak out is through this survey. It is being conducted by an adult adoptee working on her doctoral degree in the College of Public Health at The University of Georgia.

The unspoken "proper" behavior for adoptees (in some circles) has remained essentially the same for decades. Adoptees are supposed to be grateful and feel lucky for the break they received by getting adopted. Unfortunately, before being adopted, every adopted person was first relinquished. The wound of being "given away" is not supposed to matter even according to some triad members.

When adoptees first began to speak out, they were not welcomed any more than birth parents were when they first found their voices. However, I think it is crucial for all triad parents to listen to our children and take note of what they say. Then, we need to act on our children's advice about how to do adoption in the best possible way, if an adoption is necessary.

In this comment by a reader, I was told that I have not learned enough about adoptees. My reply was that I hope that I never stop learning. I actively try hard to educate myself about adoption. Before I became involved with my son's adoption, I knew virtually nothing about adoption. It seems difficult to fathom now how anyone could enter into the process so thoroughly ignorant. However, I have all kinds of reasons, none of which excuse the facts.

In 1969 when my first son was born, adoption was mysteriously shrouded in secrecy. There was no Internet, no birth parent support groups and books on the birth parent experience were nil. There was little information for birth parents to learn about adoptees in that era as well. In fact, since secrecy was so much a part of adoptee experience, many adoptees did not know that they were adopted.

Few bothered to research how adoption would affect the 1.5 million children who were relinquished during the baby scoop era when adoptions were at an all time high in America.


Here are more Adoptees Perspectives on Adoption.

What Being Adopted Means to me offers another adoptee's viewpoint.

Here is adoptionblogs.com's own adoptee blog written by Abby.