Research looking at the effects of adoption on natural parents’ mental health — which was effectively buried or ignored by the adoption industry — has been collected and pieced together by adoption support group Origins Canada.
The group, which says it offers confidential support and resources to people separated from their families by adoption, has created a timeline of key pieces of research, which spans almost four decades.
The research highlights the devastating mental health consequences on mothers who lost their children to adoption, and looks at a range of phenomena including trauma, grief, attachment and anniversary reactions.
The papers also touch on fathers’ reactions to the adoptions – data which is often missing in adoption research.
You can access the research papers here.
Additional resources can be found here.
Many thanks to Tum Mum for alerting us to this library.
Researching Reform 
Thanks Tum and Researching Reform reblogged here Family’s Need Fathers
https://www.facebook.com/groups/345642318806046/posts/4501256806577889/
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Thank you Martin. It was really interesting to see how this research developed and changed over time, even where subtly. Parents are bolder and stronger now, despite all the adversities 😘🕊️🦋 Xx
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Yes – there other activists and Canada is certainly active in finding more abuses of mothers and babies re: forced adoptions .. I am afraid it’s a global phenomena..
More adult adoptees are waking up out of the fogs of mis-identification and social policy conveniences… Falsification of their being “as a felt experience” … That’s been long in the coming and sadly for those of us affected the whole system of adoption overrides the unmet needs to revoke or claim birth status back even if it means it’s just a paper recognition of deep truth of identity….
We can certainly attest to massive pain and mental illness or other distressing effects caused by adoption itself but once again you will see the NHS never does audits on childhood abuses and Adverse Experiences in Childhood – meaning adoption too .
A large amount of NHS patients over time will have been fostered or adopted or with massively interrupted care … Guess what ? It’s hidden under labels of personality disorders or the favourite one now “EUPD” Emotional Unstable Personality Disoder..
Fathers and mothers too are devastated by break ups of family and kids being adopted .. Rather than being supported they are shunted into the system as failures and there is precious little therapy for them either .. Both my birth parents after divorce and my adoption were mentally ill with emotional breakdowns .. It trailed their lives because of lack of decent therapies (not long enough) perverse labels being applied to them and poor supports when they hit crisis ..
Out of four of us in our original family prior to martial breakdown every single one us in different times and lives attempted suicide or were seriously suicidal .. All in the late 1960’s and 1970’s .. I found all the hospitals and years of these occurrences with testimony and some hospital notes from my birth sister mentioning by birth mother too.
Some of us do not have a “life” – we have a long post traumatic hell and just finally refuse to die because of it .. My birth mom and dad (both dead now) suffered all their lives I was lucky to have met them in various ways and finally to have given them the grace of some deep understanding..
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No therapy could ever ease the pain of losing a child to adoption. So many natural parents are innocent, with babies taken for ‘risk of future harm,’ or from victims of DV, or when poverty is described as neglect for example, yet they must live their lives with society assuming they have abused or mistreated their child. Not knowing where the child you love is, who they are with, how they are being treated or even whether they are still alive is not something a human parent can bear. There’s also the agony of knowing that social workers will be lying about you to your child just as they did in their reports to the court.
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Do we really need “research” to tell us that mothers get very very upset when the babies and young children they love are taken from them and given to complete strangers like Christmas gift parcels?
Amazing that people have to waste time producing “key pieces of research spanning almost 4 decades ” !
They would be better prepared campaigning for the means to end most of the pain and suffering by demanding that forced adoption be outlawed,banned,and eliminated for ever ! ..Adoption is a wonderful thing if it is OPEN(parents know who is receiving their child) and Voluntary not secret (jail if names are received) or forced……….
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Hi Ian,
It is ok to do both and if we did not research, we would not have websites like your’s with research information on to help the families, including my own.
We would not have had the excellent yet soul destroying, heartbreaking documentary come to light ‘Missing Children’ about the cruel baby homes in Tuam. I don’t know if you watched it.
The parents and families affected deal with it best they can in various ways, but always with a broken heart, many gagged and restricted, where even the very caselaw used comes from research, we cannot underestimate it or discard it, when helping to find a way forward 🕊️🦋👍🏻 Xx
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Totally agree, it is some humanity that is required, not research. I also think adoption can be a wonderful thing, for orphans with no other family or children who really have been abused or neglected, with no other family. I would very much like to know for what percentage of modern forced adoptions is this the case but don’t suppose that data is available. Even if it was available most of it could be discounted due to ‘inaccurate’ social work reports.
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Hi vicsnortheast,
I totally agree humanity is needed and I do not remember this been the case, concerning other parents or my historical Case, and like what has happened in Tuam, we like them need justice for miscarriage of justice.
Somewhere in this research it is explained that parents can still be suffering 40 years later afterwards, it can lead to all sorts of medical problems and the children who are now older, from Tuam who was neglected and starved, dressed in rags, rocked in their dormetary locked in all the time who some of them must have seen the slow death of some of those many children, pot bellied through lack of food and nutrition. Reacting badly to severed ties with their mum’s, like we see now with current adoptions and RAD.
Adoption was actually intended for orphans, god bless them, probably no one was/is always there for them to be a voice to help support them.
Now families are meant to be kept together where at all possible, some parents like to research, some don’t. Some parents have their houses like a shrine full of their child/ren’s photos, some cannot cope with it so don’t. I have been the latter parent, but know where my photos are kept 😘🕊️🦋 Xx
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The reports in the links are “very light” and challenging to read. Can the print be made “black” rather than light blue. Thank you.
In addition, in 2018, the US Congress passed HR 253: The Family First Prevention Services Act. This law directs public agencies to keep families together.
And if you have time, read research regarding what neurological changes occur in a child’s brain, when the infant is separated from its gestational parent between birth and age 3. A gestational parent, can be defined as a natural Mom, or a hired surrogate. Either way, separation changes brain neurology.
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Hi Victor, thanks for your comment. This is not RR’s research so we cannot do anything about the colour of the text in the reports.
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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain/ 🕊️🦋 Xx
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Hi Victor, Tum, I understand the difficulty you are expressing and can only say the loss of a child is something felt by all parents and grand parents the same. It doesn’t ever ease and is haunting in its nature .Humanity is very much needed. why does this surprise you tum that we all share cells and phycology I am not surprised in the slightest by your link. sadly my children’s mother sadly died. here was nothing I could do to change this. Having met with ten social workers in Eastbourne in an attempt to get her proper help!
Victor, Can suggest with respect to you try use Settings>Ease of Access>Magnifier. in Windows 10 or even possibly web site reader software . You could even try and copy it into word and change colour. Hope it helps?
I have now received response from MP: “I confirm that [edited] has signed your complaint and it has been posted to the Ombudsman.”. in respect to my Parliamentary Complaint. I hope it will help.
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‘why does this surprise you tum that we all share cells and phycology I am not surprised in the slightest by your link.’
Hi, I’m not sure if you have read it all. No, it doesn’t surprise me, but I do find it amazing 🙂
Sadly, my child’s dad died too when my child was in his teens, I am sorry to hear your situation has been similar. Not nice for the child/ren at all, it is and getting to see how it affects them impacting on them through their grief and loss.
I too was going to suggest Word, copying and pasting the text over then changing the text colour 😘🕊️🦋 Xx
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My daughter was removed from the hospital due. “risk of future emotional harm & learn disabilities and bein in the foster care system Myself why do I need to be Punishment for .. now I am to scared to have other kids . Just in case it happens again .. no one should feel like this if they haven’t done anything worng .. somethink need to be do about the system we live in now
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It states
“The research highlights the devastating mental health consequences on mothers who lost their children to adoption”.
Its a shame they didnt include the same devastating mental health consequences for Parents who lost children to long term foster care or special guardianship’s.
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Hi Keith, there are pieces of research focused on fathers too, as mentioned in the post.
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Hi Natasha,
i didnt mean fathers are left out, i mean this research only seems to look at the devastation caused by Adoption but not LT foster care and special guardianship orders.
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I see, thank you for clarifying.
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