"When I was born, my Korean parents, immigrants to the United States, relinquished me for adoption. At the age of two and a half months, I was placed with a white family who lived in a small town in Oregon. This was the early 1980s, and mine was a closed adoption, which meant that growing up, I had no contact with my birth parents. I didn't know their names or their circumstances."
"When I was in my 20s, I decided to search for more information about my birth family. This required that I pay hundreds of dollars to an intermediary, who petitioned a Washington State court to unseal my adoption records. She couldn't share my birth parents' names or contact information with me until she found them and gained their consent."
A Korean infant born to immigrant parents was relinquished and placed with a white family in Oregon in a closed adoption in the early 1980s. Growing up, the adoptee had no contact with birth parents and lacked information about their names or circumstances; adoptive parents knew little. In the adoptee's twenties, a search required paying an intermediary who petitioned a Washington State court to unseal adoption records; birth-parent information could not be released until those parents were located and consented. The process was expensive and slow, prompting reflection on the imagined benefits of open adoption and noting scarce research on birth mothers.
Read at The Atlantic
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