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I was born during the “baby boom,” although I would hesitate to call myself a genuine baby boomer. I was hardly the product of that often idealized, postwar “boom” of enthusiasm for family and babies. You see, my birth was the inevitable outcome of a young, frightened, unmarried Catholic woman's “mistake.” Consequently, I was “given up” for adoption. Luckily, there was no shortage of couples eager to “rescue” illegitimate babies like me. We were the answers to their prayers. We were their admission tickets to parenthood.
An adopted infant is destined to grow up in a “virtual reality” riddled with contradictions. Birth is equated with loss. “Hello” to one family means “goodbye” to another. History is rewritten. Whether spoken or unspoken, the adoptee knows that he has been “saved.” Even the word adoption has the ring of “rescue” to it, which only serves to reinforce how “lucky” everyone is supposed to feel. The term “adoption” reflects a description of who has been included (what has been gained) at the expense of any mention of who and what has been excluded (what has been lost). Even the euphemism “given up” makes the decision seem almost altruistic. What we are talking about here is being given away, and most non-adopted people don't realize that the two terms are worlds apart in both meaning and impact. The adopted infant has experienced what Nancy Verrier eloquently terms “the primal wound” (Verrier 1993), the severing of the “tie” with the biological
This paper was presented as part of the Spring 1999 Scientific Meetings on “Adoption” of Psychoanalytic Practitioners of Long Island, Inc. (PPLI) on May 2, 1999. The author wishes to thank Kerstin Kupfermann, M.A., Cindy Sichel, C.S.W., Betty Jean Lifton, Ph.D., and Susanne Moss, C.S.W. for their help and support with this project.