As if the child came from my own body...

What the adopters said

What 900 submissions to Parliament reveal about the fragility of adopter identity, and the determination to silence adopted people.

Adopters tell Parliament how they feel about adopted people and their mothers. Their words are archived. And often brutal.

The Adult Adoption Information Act – Part 4 of 4

I always considered my relationship with my adopters changed the evening I told them I had found my mother and how she was killed on her way to meet me. My adoptive father grabbed my only photo of her, tore it in half and threw it across the room. “There is your mother,” he said, pointing to his wife.

But I now believe the ballast that kept our fragile relationship upright shifted in the high winds of the impending Adult Adoption Information Act.

For many adopters, the coming law must have felt like a cyclone, bringing with it the reality they had been able to avoid – their infertility and the fact of the flesh and blood mother.

But that was just my assumption, and I wondered how adopters actually felt about the impending Act.

Archives New Zealand held some of the answers.

In preparation for the Bill becoming law, over 900 submissions were made to the Statutes Revision Committee. These are held in five bulging folios. Untying the green ribbon securing the top file, I was acutely aware I had in my hands a public conversation from the early 1980s.

Many mothers and women’s groups made balanced and well-considered submissions supporting the law change, as did a few adopters. Some submissions from adopted people resonated with parts of my story, others were heart-wrenching, angry, tentative or conciliatory. Some expressed concern about hurting their adopters’ feelings. Mostly, they desired an end to secrecy and the right to know their identity and origins.

Although a handful of opposing submissions came from religious organisations supplying babies, such as the Salvation Army, the majority of objections came from adopters. Their submissions were remarkably consistent and far less tentative or conciliatory:

The Act will disrupt established families—possibly even break them apart.

It will interfere with inheritance.

We do not wish to know her name or any details about her. The law promised that it would be as if the child came from my own body.

Their “unpardonable sin” caused the need for them [the mothers] to “hide away”.

It leaves parties vulnerable to blackmail.

It may reopen old wounds, incite strife, and create prejudice.

Unwelcome contact [from mothers] could create issues of dual identity.

It may harm the adopted person if they were conceived in incest.

Adoptive parents deserve peace of mind and legal security.

It will strip away the legal security blanket from under “secret mothers.”

Regarding the moral right to know: the rights of one individual (the adoptee) should not infringe upon another’s.

It is concerning and alarming that adopted adults have rights that exceed the original contract.

It is unjust to introduce an uninvited stranger [the birth mother] with emotional appeal when the child reaches adulthood.

The child is subject to a contract, not a party to it.

Any girl capable of having a baby can likely read.

We adopted all three of our children with the expectation of total confidentiality. This arrangement suited us, and we strongly object to any loosening of this agreement.

National Party MP Philip Burdon, an adoptive father, argued that any change to existing privacy rights would be intolerable and a “gross breach of trust.” His lengthy denunciation included consultations with other adoptive parents:

“We have sought the opinions of other adoptive parents who, as a group, have had little voice. Without exception, they are adamant that our happy, well-adjusted children’s security and peace of mind should not be intruded upon by anyone, regardless of their good intentions, curiosity, or self-interest.”

Burdon described children placed for adoption as the “progeny of reluctant motherhood,” and referred to adoptees seeking information as those who: “sadly want to know the facts, which too often are likely to be distressing and sordid.”

And the kicker: “It is incredible that a government would prioritize expediency over trust merely to legislate in favor of neurosis.”

A lawyer arranging adoptions urged the committee to be cautious, claiming that only a minority of adopted persons and biological mothers supported the Bill: “The Committee should not be swayed by their petitions.”

While opposing the Bill, one submitter expressed gratitude: “To those poor girls who made that difficult decision that allowed my husband and me to achieve the family we were hoping for.” But none that I read expressed interest in how or why mothers lost their infants.

Most rendered mothers invisible and adoptees voiceless, speaking for them as if they were still infants, incapable of autonomy.

Former Prime Minister Rob Muldoon contributed his thoughts.

Writing three months after his 1984 electoral defeat, Muldoon insisted that even the veto provision in the Bill was insufficient. He claimed to represent “elderly women” who had surrendered children in secrecy:

“These women became pregnant at a time when abortion was a backstreet crime fraught with serious physical dangers.”

Muldoon overlooked that most of these women were only in their fifties. He stated that many had moved past the experience, gone on to lead normal family lives, and in many cases, never disclosed the matter to their husbands.

Describing the Bill as torture equated to physical pain, he said:

I cannot recall ever having seen a piece of legislation that inflicts as much mental anguish and cruelty on such a large number of women whose only offence was a very common form of human frailty.

Muldoon criticised advertising to inform mothers about their right to veto, arguing:

“It is true that many women pay little attention to the news media. Some women may not even know who the Registrar-General is or where to find him.”

He then deliverd the zinger, a trope adopted people still hear when they question stranger adoption:

“I am sure that without exception, they would prefer a permanently secret adoption to that alternative [abortion].”

Apart from one adoptive father, a National Party politician, and Muldoon, the submissions are written by women. While the names of male adopters grace the bottom of many, it feels as though they are affixed as proof of the women's marital status.

There is no mention of the role of men in every pregnancy. All parts of this cycle, including the protection of the fictive family, are women’s work.

The adopter submissions affected me more than I like to admit.

Rather than an element in a public conversation, they read like an onslaught of ownership and authorship over the lives of the people in their care.

They appeared not to consider the structural inequalities that privileged them as married couples professing a Christian faith. They are adamant and strident, often angry at the possibility of unravelling the dream of the adoptological family.

Their entitlement to speak on behalf of the people they acquired is mind-numbing.

What lies beneath the hostility of many of these submissions is fear – the deep fragility of adopters and the brittleness of relationships formed in secrecy and silence.

I once asked my adoptive mother if she could have given up a child she had conceived and carried. She shuddered. “Never.”

At that moment, I heard the truth: the belief that my mother – and by extension, the mothers of all people taken for adoption – was a different type of woman, indivisible from her rampant sexual self, a loose woman who broke the social contract. A woman who deserved to lose her child.

While she, a married woman had a G-d-given right to acquire that child as her own.

More to come (much more).

Footnoted version available to paid subscribers. Please email me for a PDF.

Next week:

*The Better-Life Lie

Coming up:

*My Current Name Is…

* The Wrong Royal Commission Part 1/3