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I loved the novel The English American (which I reviewed here). But I love this article even more. Why? I always prefer real life to novels. And this article is such a feel-good but honest adoption piece that I don’t even know how it made it to print. Usually the news is so filled with gloom and doom and we never hear good news. It’s another article coming out of Ireland.
I learned a few historical adoption things from this article that I didn’t previously know. Between 1940 and 1970, over two thousand Irish babies were adopted by American families. They refer to this group as Ireland’s “lost generation.” Like in America, these children were born to young mothers in families that were most often devout Catholics. Interesting, those parallels, no? (Interestingly, “very few children are placed for adoption in Ireland each year.” Maybe they realized that losing a generation of children isn’t exactly a preferred outcome.)
Anyway, what I really liked about this article (other than the awesome history lesson), was the range of experiences. Search and reunion isn’t easy. It’s not always a happy time either. As we found out in two of the four mentioned experiences, two adoptees found graves at the end of their search. However, even in one of those experiences, a positive outcome happened as the adoptee was able to meet her birth siblings. In the other case, a real relationship was formed between adoptee and birth mother.
Again, I’m thrilled to be learning something about another country’s adoption issues, history and processes. Moreover, I’m just happy to see something about adoption that doesn’t portray the stuff in a totally negative fashion. The negative happens. We know it. The news reminds us everyday of the horror stories in adoption land from adoptive parents who abuse their children to birth parents who steal their children back to adoptees who stalk birth family members. Rarely do we get to hear a feel good story about a reunion in this manner. Sure, we found the reality that sometimes at the end of a search, there’s no hug to be had. But we also got warm fuzzy feelings.
And don’t we all need some warm fuzzy feelings now and then?
