Myths and Lies
Adoptees Seek Truth
Hello, Readers, Friends, and Adoptee allies ~ This weekend, I have a segmented essay, a bit of lyrical history, and creative non-fiction/memoir for you. I've included several references with the proviso they be used as general information, as the numbers are likely not up-to-date, and laws are in flux. But as history, they could be helpful. The best state legislative updates are from Adoptees United, Executive Director, Greg Luce. Thank you for reading. I hope you will enjoy my work.
Myths and Lies: Adoptees Seek Truth
After World War II, social work organizations pushed State Vital Records Bureaus to seal adopted babies' birth records, a drastic measure meant to legitimize the abandoned, outcast, the orphaned, bastards, foundlings, and low-born -- babies born out of wedlock. By sealing these infants' records from scrutiny, social service agencies intended to ensure prospective adoptive parents’ privacy, remove the concern about birth mothers’ interference in their children’s lives, and provide an incentive to adopt, attracting couples to agencies, thereby feeding the industry.
Upon the infant’s adoption, an amended birth certificate was issued by Vital Statistics, substituting the natural mother’s name (often, the father’s name was unknown) with the adoptive parents, effectively concealing the child’s birth facts. In the 1950s, the sealing of adoptees’ birth certificates to all parties was becoming the law.
The myth of the new family was born: The child was considered a “blank slate”, rescued from scorn and illegitimacy. The adoptive parents could opt to keep knowledge of the adoption from the child. But secrecy on the part of the parents must have serious negative consequences if and when the child learns she is adopted. To deny the child her minimal truth, surely breaches trust. The combined harms caused by sealing birth records, identity and heritage loss, and severance from mother and family of origin, with limited chance to reconnect, are hard -- possibly devastating — for the child. If protecting the child from the dehumanizing labels, and shielding her from schoolyard taunts is the aim of sealed birth records, keeping her from knowledge of her origins is a burden, and denies her equal right to access, notwithstanding the privileges afforded her by adoption.
The powers that be agreed that Adoption is the best solution for all concerned, but a campaign of coercive treatment of young pregnant mothers ensued between 1945 and 1973, and were conducted by social workers, clergy, parents, doctors, and lawyers who participated in forced relinquishment. A young, unmarried, pregnant woman, if deemed unfit, unstable, or mentally ill, was “talked into”— pressured to relinquish her child. The adoption rates soared to mythical proportions — around four million — during this period now known as the “Baby Scoop Era”, in the United States. This was a practice of procurement by the adoption industry “for the good of the child”. Women without parental or partner support were packed off to maternity homes, returning without their infants, so all parties would be shielded from disgrace, and to avoid social stigma. One can only imagine the number of birth, delivery, relinquishment, foster, and adoption records falsified to achieve these misogynistic, paternalistic outcomes that harmed women and children.
Photo by Juan Manuel Sanchez on Unsplash I never asked, Where did I come from? Adopted was in my ears all my early life, but I couldn’t make sense of the word. At six, though, I would suddenly hear a fairy tale. I was assured these parents were mine, but I came from someone else! My adoptive father, Daddy, stood at the head of my bed while Mommy stood at the foot. He told me a quick bedtime story, which I heard like this: I had a family. There were other children. A mother. All died in a car crash, except for me. He said, “We brought you home, because we wanted you, because you had no one, we loved you.” Am I missing? Who am I? I couldn’t fathom this, so I kept it as a precious, fragile, special story. And because I was protected, I couldn’t come to harm. I was lucky! (In later childhood, these fantasies morphed into a sense of invulnerability, with the opposite effect of endangering me.) I fantasized about the family who came before. What do the others look like? Who do I look like? What are their names? Will I ever know them? At six and seven and eight and nine, I squinted and studied the mirror, and self-realization started. I'm here in the mirror, but, I am not. Is this the real me? And they are Irish and I must be Irish because I even look a little like Dad, my Godmother and Godfather, his brother and sister said.
My Adoption Decree states: “The party of the first part hereby gives and grants the party of the second part the full and complete custody, management, care, and control during its minority, together with the full and complete right and power as one in loco parentis to provide for and consummate the adoption of the said child by such person or persons as in the sole discretion of the party of the second part it may deem proper for the best interests and welfare of the said child.”
By these words and the state seal, one life is substituted for, superimposed on another. The adoptive parents are named, and the birth mother is omitted, deleted when she signed the release two months after she birthed Baby Ruth Ann and abandoned her to the nuns in the hospital. By this process, Ruth Ann is made into Mary Ellen. Ruth Ann is effaced. The original birth certificate is sealed and locked away by Vital Statistics. The Certificate of Birth and Baptism issued by St. Anne’s Church in Rock Hill upon finalization states that Father Sharples christened Mary Ellen on February 4, 1952. Rosemary and Pat, the adoptive father’s siblings, are the godparents by proxy. The certificate bears the seal of St. Ann’s Church, not the state of South Carolina. The document states that Al and Agnes are the child’s parents. It states the date of birth but no hospital, time of delivery, doctor, or birth weight. Until 1990, it was the only birth certificate I knew of. I learned at that time that I had an Amended Birth Certificate. My parents didn’t request it in 1964, I assume, because they were content with the church record. Falsified, mythical—was it a true legal document? Ruth Ann loses everything: her mother, her heritage, and her name. Her birthplace is immaterial in this new life with another identity. Let’s say, she was born in Rock Hill, as it says on the certificate of baptism and birth. Church and state unite in this way. The state keeps the real data. The child becomes fictive and lied about and lied to. Rebirthed, rebranded in a court, like a commodity. Exchanged by a new name for a chosen child who will fit into a family with the power to perform. It is a do-over. Let’s say, that if she were born a Baptist, she would convert to Catholicism. In one fell swoop, Ruth Ann to Mary Ellen. It would have mattered. Names matter. Double names are popular in the 1950s: Mary Lou, Mary Beth, Mary Jo, Sue Beth, Sue Ellen. Ellen Mary is the dead mother of the adoptive father—her new name is an upside-down do-over. A mirrored inversion of someone the child will never know. The infant breathed, bloomed, grew, and was called Ruth Ann for five months. She emerges from the do-over newly certified as Mary Ellen Caffrey. Not my clan.
As I grew, my Air Force Dad was gone frequently, returning to each temporary home to find I had changed, and was getting away with the behavior my busy mother overlooked. Aware that he’d somehow lost control, it wasn’t long until his frustration and disappointment in me got the better of him. I resented this deeply. My mother wasn’t a person to go deep, and her industrious, practical self didn’t have the time or inclination to relate beyond the mundane. So, I asked no questions. Internalized.
I began to lie. I’m not sure when, but it became an unfettered impulse to make things up to my mother who may or may not have been listening. I paid little heed to the truth as an adolescent. My childhood was indeed privileged. I’d lived in a fantasy of books and music, free from want yet full of need. I started to tell stories, and I couldn’t stop. I made up circumstances and pre-empted excuses. I was out of control as a teen. I was here. I was there. I told stories to her back as she washed the dinner dishes. Whatever would make her stay calm, to not react. What I could make her believe, I entered that territory — the words tumbled from my brain out my lips.
In a pained fury, he sprung from his kitchen chair, and he seethed through clenched teeth, “You’re a psychopathic liar!“ I can’t recall what I was reporting at one of our usual tense family dinners: at the table with my parents, grandmother, and my first-grader sister; also adopted. But I was, like a feral wild sixteen-year-old cat, trapped. The word, his pronouncement shocked and terrified me, as much as any such encounter with Dad. My heart pounded as he shouted his disclosure of what he and my mother had planned. “You’re sick! Your mother found a psychologist, and we’re bringing you to him.” Dread and loathing were not new signals of his punishment; a beating might follow. But he wasn’t unbuckling his belt, instead, he retreated to their upstairs bedroom. In my mental turmoil, I sobbed, nonetheless. My mother had betrayed me and now looked down at her dinner plate without speaking. I was mortified in front of my sister and grandmother. I felt embarrassed that I’d caused a family crisis without understanding why or how. Neither answers nor consolation would be forthcoming.
Doctor W.’s heavy desk separated us — I can’t recall if the straight chair I sat in was upholstered — while my mother waited quietly outside the room. Public Health nursing supervisor at the hospital where I had a summer job as a receptionist clerk for the Clinic, she had arranged the appointment. The tall slim, grey-haired therapist made entries on the notepad he held on his crossed knee. Except for an occasional low-toned, unmemorable question when he studied me through wire-framed glasses, his eyes were shut, and his head dropped, while I sat bewildered. It might have been during the second of our two appointments to which my father drove us, the doctor said we’d meet them in an adjacent room. My parents sat opposite me on a small couch, and Dr. W. headed the group. I must have felt safe and empowered in his presence. I misunderstood his power to moderate. I don’t recall what sparked it, but I blew up. Blurted the truth of my hurt, and through my tears, I saw Mom and Dad’s wounded, embarrassed expressions at my sharp, critical voice. Now they were mortified. Within moments, we left, my father's tirade continuing with his avowal not to bring me back the waste of money it was to go there, the disrespect, etc. At home, their shouting and verbal abuse continued. I was cornered in a side chair in the dining room while they took out their frustrations on me, called me a liar, and ungrateful wretch. My lying continued.
***
Mary Ellen x
Notes
SCDHEC Section 44-63-140 of the South Carolina Code was amended effective May 16, 2023, to allow adoptees, age 18 or older, who were born in South Carolina, to obtain a copy of the adoptee's original birth certificate and any evidence of the adoption held with the original birth record, if the biological parent has completed the necessary forms consenting to the release of the certificate or is deceased.
2014 Greenville News https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/13/sealed-adoptions-roadblock-quest-for-birth-parents/7677013/
Buried Secrets, Living Children: Secrecy, Shame, and Sealed Adoption Records 10/2017 in Nursing Clio
“The intentions behind confidentiality were benevolent, but sealed records created an oppressive adoption closet.” — Confidentiality and Sealed Records ~ The University of Oregon: Adoption Topics “Confidentiality was advocated by professionals and policy-makers determined to establish minimum standards in adoption, decrease the stigma associated with illegitimacy, and make child welfare the governing rule in placement decisions. In practice, confidentiality placed a premium on adoptions arranged anonymously, without any identifying contact between natal and adoptive parents. Confidentiality also meant that when courts issued adoption decrees, states produced new birth certificates, listing adopters’ names, and sealed away the originals, which contained the names of birth parents, or at least birth mothers.”
Thank you for reading!
Your writing in such an outline form as if a clinical report of factual information underscores your need for truth: to know it and to tell it. Lying is a way of coping, I'm sure. Now standing in the truth, you are healing.
So many mixed emotions. My mother was adopted, and when I tell other adoptees that she was adopted by her grandmother they seem to minimize and discount the pain she endured, as if she had it so much better because she was adopted by family. My mother never knew her parents, was troubled her entire life, eventually succumbing to her addictions, heart and lung disease, and other ailments by age 61. She never looked more peaceful than when I saw her on her deathbed.