What is a brother? What is a sister? An adopted person's thoughts
I find it difficult enough to talk about my sister who was brought into our family when I was almost two and she was around 7 months. We went to court around five years later to make the adoption official.
I was asked to stand up in court and say whether I wanted Karis to be my sister. I was confused as she already was my sister, wasn’t she? All very confusing for a 6 and 7 year old!
I didn’t realise that the reason the adoption took so long in comparison to mine is that her mother (birth mother, first mother, Christina) was contesting the adoption.
My parents put Karis into respite care when she was 14 and she never came back to the family home. She went to a series of foster placements and her adult life was tragically full of several big traumas such as losing her own children to adoption. Plus incarceration and addiction.
Whether this further trauma was ‘caused’ by my parents sending her away (an adoptee’s worst fear made real?), or whether it links back to her early months with her birth family and then in an residential care unit for babies, I do not know. What I do know, is that when I talked about my worry and concern for my sister all these decades later in an interview by a well-known adoptive parent for his podcast, he said “some might ask is she really even your sister?”
Hmm.
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Back in 2013 I was excited about being engaged. However, I got very confused when we went to the local council offices and applied for our marriage licence. As part of the process, they asked if we had ever had any other names. I wasn’t 100% sure if having a different name at birth counted and I got myself into a tizz in the council offices. Not the best experience on a day that’s meant to be a happy formality. It turned out that the “having another previous name” rule doesn’t apply to adoptees. Would have been helpful to know that!
I wanted to write about this experience and so I Googled ‘marriage and adoptees’ to see if I could find any information or if any other adopted people had spoken about it. What came up made my head spin. The official gov.uk website told me that an adoptee was legally allowed to marry their non-birth/non-blood sibling.
“Adopted children may not marry their adoptive parents but they are allowed to marry the rest of their adoptive family, including their adoptive brother or sister.” (1)
So, in effect, my brother who my adoptive mum gave birth to when I was 4 and who has been my little brother since then and who I speak to every week, and incidentally did a Lemn Sissay reading at HIS wedding, IS NOT REALLY MY BROTHER. Right, ok. Thanks gov.uk. It also means I could marry either of my adoptive sisters too!
So what was all that about being legally severed from my birth family for life upon my adoption, including losing any rights to inheritance and citizenship, and being legally merged with this new adoptive family for life? Being force fed the info that THIS is your family and it’s exactly the same as anyone else’s family ok! (Except it’s not…)
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I recently had a bombshell where my adoptive dad revealed he had a child many decades ago who had been adopted. After the initial shock, my siblings and I were keen to track this person down and see if they wanted to connect. My personal motivation was to reach out adoptee to adoptee.
We decided to research how to contact someone if you only have a name and date of birth but you believe you are related to them and they were adopted.
We discovered that previously it was only birth parents who could legally contact an adult adoptee through an intermediary*. This has now been opened up to siblings too. EXCEPT … you’ve guessed it … if you’re adopted.
Yep, that’s right. So I am not really this person’s sister…
And I’m not my blood siblings’ sister because that link has been legally severed for life, and I’m not my adopted siblings’ sister really either.
What am I? Answers on a postcard please.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
*I’m sure Pam Hodgkins knows this to the letter.
(1) https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/getting-married/
