Adoptees Search for Parents on Mother's and Father's Days

On Mother's Day and Father's Day, many adoptees have gratitude not only for their adoptive families, but also their birth families. And these two holidays may prompt adoptees to search for their birth parents.

Many people acknowledge only one aspect of adoption, which focuses mainly on the relationship between adoptees and their adoptive parents, but sometimes adoptees and birth parents feel it is important to also focus on the relationship between them as well as the search for each other.

"Adoptees search for a variety of reasons," Carol Demuth, a social worker in post adoption said, "and therefore it is difficult to make a blanket statement about adoptees searching. Searching for birth parents and ancestry is a natural action for an adoptee to obtain fundamental information about their family," Demuth said. "Adoptees, who had no control over decisions made about them as children, can now take control and make decisions about their lives, which is not synonymous with controlling the outcome of a search," Demuth said. Demuth feels there are certain requirements adoptees need to begin their search. "Respect, compassion, empathy, and tolerance are all necessary ingredients to an adoptee's search," she said.

Nancy Schaeferss, now in her mid-40s is a birth mother and an adoptee. She relinquished two children when she was 17 and 18 years old.

Schaeferss explained that some birth mothers do not want confidentiality forever, just while they were pregnant. "They didn't want the nosy neighbors, family members, church and church friends to know they were pregnant," she said.

"I want to find my birth mother to get answers to what I looked like, medical questions. I did not need another mother, but we have become good friends," Schaeferss said.

She feels the negative aspect of in her search for her birth children was finding out her birth son is in Utah State Prison. "I was in total shock when I found him there," she said.