Reply to Finding the birth mother in a closed adoption from Eastern Europe

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oof. I'm going to assume this is Ukraine or Russia, and a 22 year-old DD means that she was given up for adoption in the middle of a huge economic meltdown in the region.

I don't know, OP. There are HUGE cultural and economic issues in play here. Placing kids for adoption is not something "nice girls" do in Eastern Europe, and if she's married now there is an excellent chance she hasn't disclosed the adoption.

I know you didn't ask this, but I think you and your DD have bigger issues than just logistics.

/Ukrainian American[/quote]

+1  I lived and worked in that region for multiple years.  I also volunteered at an orphanage in my time there, so I know more than I would like about the corruption of the adoption industry.  Chances are good that:

1.  If the mother is indeed married, she did not tell her husband about the baby she gave up.  Attitudes about women are somewhat...antiquated in many ways there, especially in that timeframe.  The birth mother will NOT be happy to hear from your daughter, whom she likely views as a shameful secret she wishes to keep from her husband and family.  It would be horrible to break the terms of the sealed adoption this way.  Consider that the birth mother is living in a harsher world than your daughter and even without family medical history, your daughter has so many more open paths available to her.  Leave the birth mother alone and respect the fact that cultural differences you haven't considered might make her life very difficult if you persevere.

2.  It was/is very common for family history/medical records to be fudged or changed, and people from consulting doctors down to orphanage admin work together in this to give children a chance.  Your "connection" might be part of that: orphanages are so underfunded and conditions so poor, futures so bleak for orphans, that lying to help get a child a home with wealthy foreign parents is considered normal and acceptable.  The mother might very well not have been a "college student" at all.  There are so many babies born to drug/alcohol using women, some of whom are prostitutes, or from horribly abusive situations.  Most families would not encourage their pregnant daughter to give up the baby in that way if there were any other option.  It would be better for your daughter to never find out the family medical history than to risk learning that she is the product of one of the many situations I saw that resulted in a baby being placed for adoption there.

Just leave it, OP.  
[/quote]

You are nuts.

OP, try to find the birth mother.  Of course be discreet, and if there is a new family only reach out to the birth mother.  She might want to talk, she might not. You won’t know unless you try.  [/quote]

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