A Short Personal History of Adoption Reform

By Mary Anne Cohen

August, 2000

"In the beginning was the Word," and the first "word" of adoption reform was spoken by adoptee and social worker Jean Paton in the late 1940's, when she completed her own search and began contacting other adopted adults urging them to share their insights and stories. Much of what she learned was included in her self-published book, The Adopted Break Silence, which came out in 1954. Jean Paton was the first adopted person to write about her experience from a political viewpoint, and to question the sealing of adoption records that was moving along at full steam at the time she became active and vocal.

Born in 1907, Jean Paton had easy and legal access to her birth records, and she was upset at the trend that was making it difficult and illegal for younger adopted adults to obtain theirs. From the very beginning, her books and later her newsletter, "The Log of Orphan Voyage," spoke out for open records for all adopted adults, as well as addressing various psychological and support issues common to many adoptees. A social worker herself in an age when the social work profession almost unanimously supported sealed records and the "tabula rasa" theory of personality development, Ms. Paton showed guts and courage in standing up and speaking out for adoptee rights. Her contribution to adoption reform as its founding mother and as "a voice crying in the wilderness" cannot be overstated.

My personal contact with Jean Paton began when I saw a magazine article in which she was mentioned as supporting open records and search for adoptees. This was about 1975. As a birthmother who had always wanted to find my surrendered son, I immediately wrote to her, and she wrote right back. Thus began many years of correspondence, and my introduction to the then blossoming world of adoption reform. I joined Orphan Voyage when I was living for a brief time in Massachusetts, and was put in touch with other adoptees and birthmothers in the area, including some that were affiliated with the NY search and support group ALMA (Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association), and Lee Campbell, a local birthmother who was interested in starting a sort of birthmother auxiliary to the adoptee groups.

ALMA was started by Florence Fisher, a NYC adoptee who searched in the 60's, and wrote The Search For Anna Fisher, the autobiographical story of her search and founding of ALMA in the early 70's. I was a volunteer in the ALMA office for a year or two in the late 70's. In this era, other adoptee groups were springing up around the country: Yesterday's Children, started by Donna Cullum in Chicago; Adoption Forum, founded by Penny Partridge and others in Philadelphia; and many more in every state and Canada. All of these groups combined search help and support and began to explore legislative and legal routes to challenge sealed records laws. Betty Jean Lifton came out with her groundbreaking books on the inner life of the adoptee, Twice Born and Lost And Found, and Sorosky, Pannor, and Baran broke ranks with the social work profession to publish The Adoption Triangle, the first professional book in favor of open records. Adoptive father David Kirk wrote Shared Fate, which also supported the adopted person's right to know his heritage. Things seemed to be changing at a rapid rate. Those of us involved at the time sincerely believed that once legislators and courts heard our sad stories and longing for reunion, it would only take a short time for laws to change. We were quite wrong, on several counts.

In 1976, a group of birthmothers met at Lee Campbell's home on Cape Cod to discuss the formation of a birthmother group, and CUB (Concerned United Birthparents) was born. Initially, this group fully supported adoptee civil rights, and testified at many early hearings for open records legislation all over the country. CUB also got involved in family preservation and other birthmother rights issues. I held dual membership in CUB and ALMA at that time, as well as still being involved with Jean Paton and Orphan Voyage, although the leadership of these groups did not agree on much. For example, Florence Fisher to this day insists that ALMA is the only "real" adoption reform and advocacy group, and refuses to work or network with anyone. Because of this, ALMA has gone from a national power to be reckoned with in adoption reform to an obscure local NYC group, almost cult-like in its obsessive insularity.

The emphasis of adoption reform groups in the 70's, 80's and early 90's gradually narrowed to an exclusive emphasis on the psychological "need to know," primal wounds, and search as a necessary tool for adopted persons to be "whole." The American Adoption Congress (AAC), founded with great hopes in the late 70's, has not thus far lived up to its early ambition to be a widely accepted and effective umbrella organization for adoption reform. As one who attended the AAC first meeting in 1978, and who served for several years on a recent AAC Board, I am very much saddened by this.

In 1980, five birthmothers in NJ founded Origins, a group similar to CUB but with a much looser structure and more emphasis on search help for birthmothers of younger adoptees than CUB was willing to take on. I was one of the Co-Founders, along with Mirah Riben, who wrote The Dark Side of Adoption. I am now the newsletter editor of Origins, which reaches everywhere in the US and several other countries. I consider Origins to be my most significant and lasting contribution to adoption reform and birthmother issues.

The adoption reform movement that got off to such an enthusiastic start in the 70's with the beginning of so many groups and attempts at legislation and court reform, including the ALMA lawsuit that it was hoped would open records by Supreme Court decision, did not live up to its early promise. For many reasons, and with only the best intentions, the distinction between the personal and psychological issues in adoption, and the political and civil rights issues became hopelessly blurred and tangled in ways that most reformers could not even recognize. They were too habituated to their own peculiar worldview as reinforced at countless conferences and read in endless newsletters. They could not understand why this left legislators and the general public puzzled and cold, and how conditional legislation grew out of the social work/psychological model of adoptee rights that they were espousing.

It was not until Bastard Nation appeared on the scene that adoption reform got back on track. "It's about rights, not reunions" has made all the difference in how many of us view adoption reform, and how we present it to the world and legislators -- and it is working where the old arguments fell flat. The writings of Dr. Randolph Severson, and correspondence with him, have also helped me to see adoption and adoption reform from a wider perspective, and to clearly separate the emotional issues from the political, and junk adoption therapy and theory from the real thing. In the realm of birthmother issues, CUB, which almost died of neglect and fossilized thinking last year, is about to rise again as a vital force both in support of adoptee civil rights and in birthmother advocacy, with a whole new group of dedicated birthparents at the helm.

I hope this brief and sketchy history fills in some gaps and provides some historical context for those of you new to adoption reform. Please join with those of us who have been here for years in the good fight, and together let's learn from the past and make the future one of freedom and dignity and open records for adopted adults everywhere.