ADOLESCENCE is the time when everyone's search for identity begins, the time when we begin to explore who we are. For the adopted teenager, issues of identity can be particularly troubling.
"Identity is a subjective sense of sameness and continuity," explains Nora Gibbons, senior social worker with Barnardo's, "and for adopted people, there's a widespread problem with continuity." Ultimately, such problems can only be tackled with information.
"From the adoptive parents' position, how they cope will depend on whether they have true, accurate, and enough information about their adopted child's background, on whether they've been given photographs of the child's birth parents, or have met the birth mother and know the reasons for the adoption.
"With that information, the adoptive parent can then do what a parent should do, and answer a child's questions about its origins." If adoptive parents don't have the information, they should go back to the agency they first dealt with and look for it.
And they shouldn't assume that because a teenager doesn't ask, he or she isn't interested. "It is similar to other `difficult to talk about' issues, like sex, and parents must create ways to introduce the topic. One lovely family I know has a `life story' book that takes their child from birth, to the foster family, and then to their family." There has been considerably more openness about adoption in the past 10 to 15 years than in the years before as the story of the babies exported to the US vividly illustrates. "But in Cork last year, for example, I met a group of parents of adopted 10 year olds who didn't have information." Like so many other issues in Ireland, adoption has been surrounded by secrecy sometimes, from the best of intentions. Adoptive parents might be slow to tell their adopted child something that might hurt him or her. Grown up adopted children won't tell their adoptive parents how badly they want to search for their birth parents.
Sometimes, an ad opted person won't want to tell his or her own children they're adopted. It's a cycle of secrecy that must be broken, says Gibbons.
"We encourage adoptive parents to tell their child from babyhood, to practice telling their baby what they want to tell him or her later on. This doesn't mean forcing the issue every day. But they should keep the lines of communication open." Adopted children and teenagers should be given the opportunity to talk about it, no matter what their feelings. Some children appear unconcerned, others can be very bitter. "The important thing is that a child who's bitter should be listened to, not shushed up.
"Sometimes, if an adolescent is too angry to talk, I would suggest that you type out the information for him or her, or give pictures or documents - but NOT original material that he or she might tear up in a rage. "Always, the adoptive parent should give the message `I will talk about it', or help you find someone outside the home, or in the extended family, whom you can talk to." Adopted children of mixed race can face additional, real problems in our almost exclusively white society. They may face racial prejudice, or simply naive curiosity, every day of their lives. "Quite a few do come to us, and they have an extra story to tell. And it can really be a problem in adolescence, a time when children want to be the same as everybody else, not different." In a few short years time, Ireland's Romanian babies will be teenagers. Will they have problems of identity too? In some ways, thinks Gibbons, adoptive parents of Romanian babies are better equipped than many others to explain their origins to them. They often met birth parents and have more information. "But we appeal to them to get it down on paper now, while it's still fresh in their minds." Do teenagers get upset if they watch TV dramas that deal with adoption? A storyline in which a teenager is plunged into doubt and confusion after discovering he's adopted is a staple of soaps. In fact, probably the opposite, thinks Gibbons.
Anything that encourages young people not to feel alone is helpful, she says. Indeed, many adopted people, as well as birth mothers and fathers, have an interest in some shape or form, in their origins, or what happened to their babies "and in a more open society, can give voice to it.
BARNARDO'S Adoption Advice Service has been inundated with calls in the days since the story of the US adoptions broke. As far as Nora Gibbons is concerned, anything that sheds light on adopt ions is a good, and necessary, thing. And she urges anyone, even long grown up adults, who feel they need to know more about their origins to do something about it now.
"This is living history, but eventually, people will die, and they might be left with regrets, which can be most damaging." She does not believe that concern for your adoptive parents' feelings should stop you. "In effect, you're handing over control of your life to somebody else, even if out of the best of motives, and you may at some level, hold it against them. But you owe it to yourself and to your adoptive parents, whom you're half blaming - to find out what you need to know.
And she reminds adoptive families that adopted people, "whatever their age, will always need the support of that family, of the mum, dad, sisters and brothers."
