Family Health History Updates and Adoption

I read an adoption agency post on Family Health History, left a comment, went back to read it again and realized the post is from 2016.  My comment is still there pending approval, which I expected as I commented on the weekend.  The post was on what the adoption agency does with any family medical updates, note what they do seems pretty standard across agencies, something I’ve talked about before.  Adoption agencies can also charge an adoptee to pull their file.

Is the standard good enough is the question I’m asking you my friends.

If you answer in the comments:

1. Include your role in adoption (first parent, adoptive parent, adoptee).
2. Answer whether it is good enough to you, and why, if it’s not good enough, what should be done instead.
3. Include whether you’d have known to check with the adoption agency regularly for updated family health history.

Here is the post: Adoptees and Updated Medical Information

My comment is below, but please don’t click the ‘Read the rest of this entry’ until you’ve read the above post linked, so it’s read without my bias good or bad.  If you are going to comment, it would also be good to do that before you read my comment.

 

A quick shout out…

An adoptee has created a wonderful resource and is collecting not only stories, but stats!  His tweet’s today are priceless and shows the evolution of what happened in adoption history, how sealing adoption court records from the public, over the years morphed into sealing adoption court records from the one who the court records were about.

This day in adoptee history, April 14, 1917. #adopteerights https://t.co/daUY8HsKQV

—
Adoptee Rights Law (@adopteelaw) April 14, 2017

*

It wasn't until 1939 in Minnesota when OBC's were sealed, but even then should have been available by court order

—
Adoptee Rights Law (@adopteelaw) April 14, 2017

*

You can follow him here: https://twitter.com/adopteelaw

 

 

 

 

It was my mother’s birthday the other day…

Specifically, the birthday of my mother by birth.  The morning before, I had this thought that there was a birthday I was missing, but I had no idea whose, or even when, just that it was someone’s birthday soon, perhaps that day.  Seeing as I couldn’t figure it out I went to check my family trees to see if it was a direct line ancestor’s birthday.  I checked dad’s tree first because it’s the one I know best, nothing, so then I moved to my maternal birth family tree, and there it was, my mother’s birthday was the next day.

 

Again…

Dr. Donna Campbell, a Texas legislator has written a preemptive letter against Texas changing the law that seals an adult adoptee’s original birth certificates away from them.  As I read the letter, it made me feel like adoptees aren’t part of families who adopt and birth parents who place.  No room at the table for adult adoptees.  She does state accommodations can be made to provide medical history, and notes there is already a way for an adoptee to get their original birth certificate, I.e. if they know the name of the parent(s) on the original birth certificate…

 

Please stop spreading misinformation on adoption history

I know I’ve talked about it before, but I continue to see both adoption agencies and adoptive parents speak on what adoption was like back in the 50’s and 60’s.  They blithely state misinformation, as if, it was fact.

 

When you talk about finding your family by birth…

Invariably, when some hear about an adoptee wanting to find their family of birth, they leap to money, the adopted one is looking for an inheritance.  That’s what I want to talk about today.  Unless you’ve lived your life as an only, you have no lived experience to explain the complicated, nuanced feelings an adoptee can have being adopted, not having full knowledge of their identity.  The collateral damage that can happen when you have missing pieces.