Closed adoption
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Note: This article refers mainly to closed adoption in the United States. If you have further information on closed adoption in other countries, or international closed adoption (e.g. South Korea -- USA) please help Wikipedia by contributing.
Closed Adoption (sometimes called "secret adoption") is the process by where an infant is adopted by another family, and the record of the natural (birth) parent(s) is kept sealed. (Often, the natural father was not recorded -- even on the original birth certificate.) An adoption of an older child who already knows his or her natural parent(s) cannot be made closed or secret. This formerly was the most traditional and popular type of adoption. It still exists today, but it's use is rapidly declining in favor of open adoption. The sealed records effectively prevent the adoptee and the natural parents from finding each other (especially in the days before the internet.)
Prior to adoption, oftentimes the infant would be placed in temporary foster care for a few weeks until the adoption was approved. This would also help insure that he or she was healthy, and nothing was overlooked at the time of birth. Nowadays, this practice is discouraged, as it prevents immediate bonding between the mother and child. With the high demand to adopt infants, there is usually no reason the adoption cannot be initiated prior to birth.
Under the closed adoption procedures, the infant is issued a second, amended birth certificate that states the adopting parents as the actual parents (as if they were the child's biological parents). The hospital may be omitted, especially if it was intended to serve only unwed mothers, such as the Salvation Army hospitals. (Many were named after its founder William Booth). By the end of the 1970s, all of these hospitals in the USA had closed due to high costs and the reduced need for secrecy. It was no longer considered shameful to have a child out of wedlock in America. More and more mothers were either raising their child as a single parent (often with the help of the newly created institution of government welfare), or having an abortion (which was legal everywhere in the USA by 1973).
Closed adoption has been increasingly criticized in recent years as being unfair to both the adoptee and his or her natural parents. Some people believe making a child's parents quite literally a state secret is a gross violation of human rights -- even to be analogous to slavery. (Many African Americans have rejected the concept of adoption on this basis.) On the other hand, the natural mother may have desired the secrecy because of a premarital affair. In pre-1960s America, this was considered taboo, and she would have been shunned from society if found out. Some studies report that healthy children adopted as infants have a much higher risk of becoming emotionally disturbed, and that adoptive parents are more likely to be abusive than in more traditional families. Though all parents make mistakes, adoptive parents may be less likely to consider the possibility that they are doing something wrong, and blame the child's heredity instead.
Other problems include the lack of a genetic medical history which could be important in disease prevention. Sometimes the adoptee's relationship with his or her adoptive parents goes bad, and it's forbidden to find their birth parents. The natural mother might often think of the child she had given away, but could not contact him or her -- even if they had passed the age of majority (usually 18). Only a court order would allow the adoption records to be unsealed. However, this was extremely rare until the early 1990s, as were all reunions prior to that time.
Nowadays, there are internet sites and physical registries (by postal mail) designed so adoptees and their natural parents can locate one another at little or no cost. (Many require the adoptee to be at least 18 years old.) Of course, both must have registered in order for there to be a match. Should these types of registries fail, recent laws in many states of the USA have made it possible for one party to contact the other via a confidential intermediary. This person petitions the court to view the sealed adoption records, then conducts a search similar to that of a private investigator. In case the other party indicates that it does not want to be contacted, by law the information would not be given out. In practice, however, this seldom happens and most often the natural mother and the adoptee are very happy to finally know one another. It is uncommon to find both the natural mother and father at the same time, and often a separate search can be done afterwards for the father. Since males seldom change their surname, and the mother might have additional information, it is usually easier than the initial search for the natural mother. In many cases, adoptees are able to do this second search for their natural father by themselves (or try before paying for assistance). The cost for a confidential intermediary and related court fees is somewhat expensive, costing around US$500, but this varies by state and agency. Most agencies charge everyone a fixed fee which includes everything, and only in the most extreme and unusual circumstances ask for additional funds. If the adoptee is unable to locate (or would prefer to use a third person) to find his or her natural father, often the same confidential intermediary can be used for an additional fee.
For many years in New York State, adoptees had to obtain permission of their adoptive parents (unless deceased) to be included in a state-sponsored reunion registry regardless of the age of the adoptee. In some cases, older adults or even senior citizens felt like they were being treated like children, and required to obtain their parents' signature on the form. In a broader sense, they felt it could be inferred that adopted children are always children, and thus second-class citizens subject to discrimination. The law has since been changed.
Starting in the late 1980s, many adoptees and their parents first learned about the possibility of reunion on the NBC (later CBS) television program Unsolved Mysteries. As of 2006, reruns of the program are still being aired on the Lifetime Television cable network in the early afternoon. Females have statistically been somewhat more likely than males to search for their birth parents, and far more likely to search for their adopted children.
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