Happy reunion: Pauline Prescott was reunited with her son Paul - but not all cases work out as well

A new report reveals yet another way in which ­Facebook is being used and abused by its gormless army of fans: hundreds of adopted teenagers and adults are now bypassing official ­channels and using social networking sites to trace their birth families.

Those too impatient to wait for the months taken by more formal tracing services — or, more worryingly, those too young to be accepted by them (you must be 18, or 16 in Scotland) — are going online to find their birth parents.

As you might guess, it often goes ­horribly wrong. Some find Mummy is happy with a new family and children and feel miffed; some find nothing in common with her and some are harshly told to go away. Their birth mother doesn’t want to know.

From the tone of the report, we are, ­apparently, supposed to feel sorry for these bewildered ‘victims’, and to a degree, ­especially for the younger ones, I suppose I do. But for the most part, I’m afraid, if they are victims at all, then it is of a prevailing ­culture that encourages adopted ­children to believe that unless they trace their birth parents, their lives are ­somehow incomplete.

The whole process of adoption, these days, has been overtaken by a ghastly conspiracy between U.S.-style psycho-babblers and the human rights brigade.

The first is responsible for ensuring that, rather than celebrating their good fortune in life, anyone who has been adopted must be assumed to be ­miserable — God help me if I read one more whine from someone feeling ‘incomplete’, ‘tormented’ or ­‘psychologically scarred’, when their sole problem is ­ignorance of their gene pool.


Pauline Collins: Gave up her baby daughter but has since had a reunion

Their self-pity is then ably reinforced, both by legal entitlement to tracing and by those who should know better: one adoption ­consultant at the British ­Association of Adoption and Fostering ­actually said this week, ‘Tracing birth relatives should be a right for all’.
A right? A right? Really?

Children have a right — certainly a moral right — to be loved, protected, fed, clothed and raised with care; indeed, it is an international disgrace that so many millions of them are denied anything like that care.

Nowhere, however, is it ­written that ­children have a moral, civil or human right to assuage curiosity. It might be nice. ­Interesting, even.

We all like answers to puzzles. So I wouldn’t quibble with anyone who sought to slot the pieces into place — if, and it’s a big if, they can do it without causing pain.

What I fear is happening, ­however, is that in the rush to reunion there are too many decent people ­trampled underfoot, as the zeal for personal ­discovery replaces old-­fashioned notions of love or even gratitude.

Adoptive ­parents do an amazing thing. They give over their whole lives to take in a stranger — and while there is no doubt that in most cases they are rewarded and ­fulfilled by doing it, it is no less ­generous of them.

They also have to jump through many more hoops than any ­natural parents would be asked to do.

Only a few months ago, two friends finally brought home their adopted toddler, and I have seen their ­gruelling two years’ ­preparation — some at their own instigation, some at others’.

They swapped their minimalist designer-flat for a family-friendly house, gave up one job altogether and cut down on the other, stopped smoking and drinking, attended enforced parenting classes and sat, mouths zipped shut, while spotty young social workers lectured them on, for instance, the required ­attitude to ‘racial awareness’.

That little boy doesn’t know how lucky he is; like most children, he will probably never fully appreciate the sacrifice. So be it. What child ever does — whether adopted or not?
But if, in 17 years’ time, he tells my friends he has always felt ‘incomplete’ or ‘tormented’, I can only imagine the pain it will cause them.

Of course, they have been primed for his eventual desire to find his ‘real’ parents.
In fact, they’re already steeling themselves not to be hurt but to be understanding and I am sure, being the good ­people they are, that they will do their very best to mean it. But I am equally sure that it will hurt.

Why, then, are adopted ­children so often encouraged to cause this pain to the ­families that have loved and nurtured them?

For make no mistake, the pressure is there: when shrinks insist that it is essential for a healthy psyche and social ­services insist that it is your basic human right, even if the adoptee doesn’t care much either way, someone will.

One adopted friend of mine, now in middle age, had never felt a twinge of interest in his birth mother; his wife, ­however, a ­devotee of psycho-analysis, was so certain it was essential for his inner well-being that she took it upon herself to start the hunt.

Eventually, some old woman was duly met; my friend — her son — felt nothing, the woman felt sad, the adoptive parents felt, well, who knows? All we do know is that nobody in the whole sorry saga actually felt better. These are the stories that don’t get told.

Instead, we are inundated with fairytales: the reunions, for instance, of actress Pauline ­Collins with the daughter she gave up or Pauline Prescott with her long-lost son.

It is as if everybody’s life’s worth is ­measured by its candidacy for Who Do You Think You Are? — their entire personal history elevated (or do I mean reduced?) to the level of a TV reality show.


Adopted teenagers and adults are favouring social networking sites to find long lost relatives, rather than other channels

Let me clear: I have no doubt that for some, tracing their birth parents is a life-enhancing experience that brings joy to all ­parties involved.

I recognise, too, that it’s ­probably too late, now, to put the genie back into the bottle.
The technology is there, the feeding frenzy is positively encouraged and the high-­profile happy endings too tempting to resist.

But, as the years go by, I ­suspect that the current crop of unhappy, Facebook-initiated reunions will pale by comparison with those still to come. For adoption is changing — or, rather, the ­reasons for it and the kinds of people involved are changing.

Pauline Collins and Pauline ­Prescott gave up their babies in the Fifties and Sixties, when they were devoted teenagers unable to cope.

Such girls nowadays, however, can, and do, get help — leaving the ones who give up their babies, by choice or by court order, as quite a ­different kettle of fish.

If, in 17 year’s time, my friends’ lad searches, this is the truth he will find: his birth mother, an alcoholic crack addict, has had more babies than she has ­fingers, each by ­different fathers.

She didn’t want him, she didn’t want the others she had, and she won’t want the ones she is, ­inevitably, yet to have.

In short, what my friends’ beloved new son will discover is that the truth is not such a ­fairytale, after all. There is not, always, a happy ending.

So not only will his parents feel hurt but he, poor kid, will be ­devastated, too.

He might wish, rather too late, that he had been ­encouraged instead to count his many ­blessings and leave well alone; to realise that his half-empty glass was, all along, a lot more than half full.

Still, never mind. It will have been his ‘right’ to know the truth. Won’t it?

By Carol Sarler

Source: dailymail.co.uk