Adoption Registry
With all of the adoption reunion registry stories that you see on daytime television, you would think that it would be easy to find your birth parents. All you have to do, in theory, is to go down to the national adoption registry, do a quick search, and give the folks a call. In reality, adoption registries are often poorly organized, partial, and incomplete. If you want to find your birth family, you might have to stop spend weeks, months, or even years looking for them.
Nonetheless, for many adopted children it is worth it. Looking through the adoption records itself can be somewhat cathartic, and there is no substitute for knowing where you come from. It can be traumatic to think that your parents were unable to take care of you and put you up for adoption when you were young. Some children just need to know the answer to the question why. Others crave a deep relationship with their birth parents. Wherever you place on the scale, you know how important it is to get results.
Doing an adoption search is basically like detective work. As a matter of fact, many people hire private investigators to look into the adoption registry. You start wherever you can, and go wherever you need to. If you know where your birth parents had you delivered, you can talk to the hospital. If you know what adoption agency your parents used, you can talk to that agency. If you were born in the United States, it is generally easier to get results than if you were born overseas and adopted in the US. International adoption registries vary greatly, and some adopted children have little or no hope of ever finding their birth parents. In America, by contrast, the adoption registry is usually fairly well-kept.
What many people never bother to think about is what to say to their birth parents once they find them. I know a lot of adopted children who get so caught up in looking through the adoption registry that they never really questioned why they are looking for their parents. Sooner or later, all adopted people have to face this question. Are you mad at your parents for putting you up for adoption? Can you have a friendship with them? Are they the type of people you want to get to know? None of these questions should dissuade you from looking through the adoption registry, but they should give you pause along the way.
Adoption records
If you are searching for adoption records, you may or may not have any luck finding them. It has a lot to do with what type of records you are seeking. If you are looking for records for those who are still alive, possibly even for yourself, you may have problems. However, if you are working on your family tree, you may be able to find things far back in your family line. Sometimes, these are easy to find, and other times, next to impossible to locate.
When searching for your own adoption records, you may have big problems. If you have been adopted privately though a lawyer, you may not be able to open those records. If you aren’t sure where or when, but you really want to find out what they say, you can seek the help of a lawyer or even a private investigator, but you should know you may not find what you are looking for. There are some services online that can search for them for you, for a fee, but you can’t be sure they will find anything either. However, they are something to try when all else has failed.
When it comes to genealogy, you are going to have better luck in some cases. There are many web sites devoted to this subject, and they do have some adoption records in their files. What you can find will depend on if the adoption records have been saved, and if they have been put online. There are times when files were destroyed due to fire, or were just misplaced, and if there were not copies, that information is going to be gone forever. There are also times when names are transcribed incorrectly, so when looking for this type of information, think of possible misspellings if you aren’t coming up with anything useful.
Any time you are looking for adoption records, remember to give it some time. These are also something that can be a huge goldmine for someone who is tracing a family tree but has come up against a brick wall. The reason they may not be able to go back any further might be due to an adoption that was not otherwise noted. By going back and looking for records in an area of time period, a name may pop up. Many times this is the reason why some lines stop and no one can find information on the name. That is because the name abruptly changed.
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