TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/100989/10098900.030

Text File | 1990-09-18 | 5.5 KB | 103 lines

LIVING, Page 90

Are You My Mother?

Adoptees and birth parents move mountains to find one another

By Elizabeth Taylor


    Patricia Szymczak was 36 years old when she decided to pursue
a quest she had contemplated since childhood: finding her mother.
Adopted in infancy, Szymczak, a reporter with the Chicago Tribune,
attacked the task as if on deadline. She knew the woman's name and
hometown from a 1953 Illinois adoption decree, obtained when she
turned 18 from her adoptive mother. Szymczak called the local post
office, found a retired mailman and got him talking about the
family -- her family. She contacted old neighbors, who led her to
friends. Some had seen the woman, who now lived out of state, at
a recent high school reunion. Finally, she got her phone number.

    But before tremulously placing the call, Szymczak journeyed to
the tiny public library in her mother's hometown 300 miles from
Chicago. "My fantasy," she explains, "was to open a high school
yearbook and see a woman who looked like me." On page 15 of the
1952 yearbook, Szymczak's fantasy came true. The smile was the same
one Szymczak saw in the mirror; the graduation quote: "I'm just the
girl you're looking for." The long search ended with a three-hour
call from a pay phone. By the end of the conversation, it was after
midnight on the second Sunday in May. Patricia Szymczak smiled and
wished her newfound relation a happy Mother's Day.

    According to the North American Adoption Congress in New York
City, there are more than 60,000 Americans engaged in quests like
Szymczak's: mothers anxiously seeking children they gave up at
birth, children hunting for their biological parents. Desperate,
obsessive, their searches have, over the past two decades, ceased
to be merely a matter of individual effort and have become a
national movement. There are more than 450 support groups for
searchers. Many conduct meetings modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous,
in which new participants rise with the passion of the converted
and state their mission: "I'm Sarah, and I'm looking for my
daughter born on . . ."

    At the forefront of the movement are the N.A.A.C. and ALMA
(Adoptees Liberty Movement Association), which lobby to change
state laws protecting the confidentiality of adoption records.
Three states -- Alabama, Alaska and Kansas -- have completely open
records, available to all adoptees over 18. Other states require
the consent of a birth parent, the child and one or both adoptive
parents before documents may be unsealed.

    Those intent on recovering their past often start by contacting
one of the voluntary registries set up by 22 states to match
adoptees with birth parents who are looking for them. The most
successful effort is the International Soundex Reunion Registry in
Carson City, Nev., a private, nonprofit center that since 1975 has
matched more than 2,200 people.

    The seekers sometimes hire "search consultants" and go to great
lengths, even illegal ones, to find their kin. "I'm calling about
a probate matter" and "I'm doing genealogy" are typical little
white lies. Many justify their actions with the claim that they are
victims of adoption, robbed of their heritage or shamed into giving
up an illegitimate child. Their anger and desperation have led some
psychologists to conclude that adoption leaves a permanent wound.
"Birth parents and adoptees are amputees in our society," says Los
Angeles psychologist Annette Baran, who specializes in
adoption-related counseling. Says she: "I think reunions are
excellent, even when the outcome is bad."

    And sometimes the outcome is very bad. Some search for decades
to no avail; others learn that their child has been abused, that
their mother committed suicide or that they are the product of
incest. Even a happy reunion can produce "an overwhelming feeling
of anger and confusion, and rearrange everything in one's life,"
says Linda Brown, co-author of a forthcoming book on the subject,
Birthbond.

    Searches can take unexpected turns. San Antonio public school
counselor Claude Thormalen, 49, not only found his mother but
learned from her that he had an older half sister Nancy, who had
also been given up for adoption. To his amazement, Nancy turned
out to be a high school acquaintance. Gayle Beckstead, 55, who now
works as a search consultant in Simi Valley, Calif., learned of a
sister -- who hadn't been put up for adoption. When they met, Gayle
found a depressed high school dropout who had given up four
out-of-wedlock children. The sister regarded the middle-class
Beckstead with obvious envy. Beckstead recalls, "Her anger was,
`How come I was kept, and you were given away?' She saw the
advantages of my life."

    Reunions are not for everyone. Some birth mothers would slam
the door if their relinquished baby came knocking. In fact, the
search process is the focus of a great debate in adoption circles.
Critics contend that it breaks legal contracts, that
confidentiality should be the cornerstone of adoption. Says a woman
who gave up a child 28 years ago: "The mere thought of being found
by this baby is so upsetting. I made a new life for myself, and it
doesn't include her."

    Not every adopted child wants to open that door. "A search
would rob me of a certain amount of security, the security that
comes from believing that the family I know is my real family,"
argues Rhonda Brown, 34, a New York City lawyer. "I'm the one who
has finally defined my identity -- not someone from the mysterious
past."


-- Mary Cronin/New York and James Willwerth/Los Angeles