'Impact of adoption doesn't stop once you become an adult'
Adopted children searching for their birth parents have a hard time finding answers. Growing up without knowing where you come from has a big impact on mental well-being. Shashitu Hitzerd is adopted herself and works at the Adoption Support Center: “Care providers are not very familiar with the complex reality of adoption.”
Impossible task?
I was adopted from Ethiopia and grew up in the Netherlands. I was abandoned as a baby and my birth parents were unknown. They supposedly could not take care of me. This made the search for my past an impossible task.
Where do you start looking if you don't know the names of your birth parents, the day or the place you were born? It seemed impossible and yet I kept asking myself: Do I look like my parents? Do I have any brothers and sisters? Why was I given up? Are my parents still alive? When no answers are forthcoming, as a child you form a fantasy image of your birth parents and your past.
'The search for my past was dismissed as an impossible task.'
As I grew older, I came into contact with other adoptees. Some had found their parents or other family members. Others had been searching for a long time but had not made any progress.
Some had been told they had been abandoned, only to find out in their search that this was not true. Others had been told their parents were dead, only to find out that their parents had been searching for them their entire lives.
All these stories made me doubt my own story. I am not alone: this is a reality that many adoptees live in.
I'm not the only one
Since the mid-twentieth century, thousands of children have come to Belgium through intercountry adoptions and the (involuntary) transfer of Metis children from former Belgian colonies.Metis children are children born during the Belgian colonial period in Central Africa from a European white parent and an African black parent. For the majority of children, this involves a white Belgian father and a black African woman. Source: https://www.metis.arch.be/ce-que-nous-faisons?lang=nlThere are also many 'sous-x-adopted' children: children of Belgian mothers who went to give birth in France and were then brought back to Belgium. And of course many children were also adopted within Belgium.
Although there are many adoptees, there was limited attention for aftercare for these children and adults for a long time. This while leaving your birth parents and country, and ending up in a completely new environment, can cause a lot of trauma.
Over the years, this has changed somewhat, but we still see that the psychosocial support of adoptees and metisses is still lacking. Not only adoption-specific organizations, but also broader care providers have an important role to play in this.
Right to identity
Knowing where you come from, who your parents and grandparents are, what your family history is, under what circumstances you were born… For most people, the answers to these questions are obvious or easy to find. Answers can be found in photo albums, government documents and family stories. And sometimes they are in aid reports or official archive material.
As an international community, we felt that knowing this information was so important that we enshrined it in the Universal Rights of the Child . Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have the right to a name, a nationality and to know their birth parents. In Article 8, we read that children have the right to retain that identity.
But for a whole group of people, these rights apparently do not apply. Many transnational, domestic and sous-x adoptees and métis live in a reality in which they will never gain insight into their lives before their adoption. Consciously and unconsciously, this search was made difficult. Certain steps in the life trajectory of these children were not documented, consciously or unconsciously, and documents were falsified or disappeared.
Documentary series such as Francisco Desir , We are family and Metissen van België provide insight into the complex journeys of adoptees and metissen to discover their birth identity and circumstances.
Impact on mental well-being
Articles 7 and 8 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child are in jeopardy for adoptees and métis. This also puts their identity development in difficult waters. In addition, some of these children grow up in a context without people who look like them and in which there is not always attention for the complex position of an adopted child.
In addition, adoptees and metis, like other people with a migration background, are confronted with racism and discrimination . Again, a factor that has an impact on their identity development and mental well-being.
On top of that, the malpractices in intercountry adoption and the transfer of métis from Congo, Rwanda and Burundi to Belgium raise additional uncertainties. Is the information I have received correct? Do I belong here in Belgium or would my family in my country of birth have been able to take care of me and would they have wanted to? Domestic and sub-x adoptees are sometimes confronted with similar questions, since these adoptions did not always go smoothly either.
Existing support offering
Those involved in adoption can contact adoption services, the Adoption Support Center and the Ancestry Center with their questions and problems.
Support Center Adoption offers aftercare to all those involved in adoption. However, the involvement of the support center in the preparation processes of adoptive parents ensures that not everyone finds a safe and neutral place to go with questions or problems.
'Peer contact is an important source of recognition.'
The Ancestry Center was founded in 2021 to provide informative, practical and psychosocial support to people searching for their origins. This goes beyond adopted children, donor children can also come here. But the Ancestry Center cannot handle the number of questions . The waiting time for starting a trajectory is one and a half years.
In addition to these official bodies, there is a strong network of groups in which adoptees and metisses support each other . Peer contact is an important source of (re)cognition, and of practical and emotional support. However, here too, not everyone finds a connection with these groups.
Role for aid
The specific offer for those involved in adoption is therefore not sufficient. Anyone who does not find a connection with these institutions, who encounters waiting lists or who needs more specialized help, should be able to turn to the broader assistance.
Unfortunately, we see that adoptees or métises not only encounter waiting times like everyone else, but also caregivers who are not very familiar with the complex reality of adoption. This is a reality of potentially traumatic ruptures with birth parents, birth culture and country of birth. A reality of questions about one’s origins that may never be answered, and a reality of growing up in an environment where no one looks like you.
There are care providers who do have expertise in these themes. On the adoption map of Steunpunt Adoptie there are about 130 of them. On vindeenpsycholoog.be there are 55 psychologists who offer support with adoption. But this number of care providers should be considerably higher, given the high numbers of adoptees and metisses in Belgium.
Right to Birth Identity
In too many cases, metis and adoptees have been denied the right to know their birth identity. As a society, and certainly as social professionals, we should act against the deprivation of this right.
This starts with being informed about this theme and being familiar with the uncertainties and injustices that metis and adoptees are confronted with. In addition, the social sector can amplify the voices of experts and people with experience. Social professionals can also stand up for the rights of this group, as they already do for many other groups. Think of demonstrations for the rights of refugees or against racism.
Right to aftercare
Adoptees and metis have the right to appropriate aftercare. And not only during childhood. After all, the impact of adoption does not stop when you become an adult. Each new phase in life can bring up new questions and uncertainties.
Adoptees and metisees should have a place within the care system where they can go with these questions, and any psychosocial problems that arise from them. This place should also exist for birth parents, adoptive parents and other people around adoptees or metises.
'It is up to care providers and social workers to guarantee the right to aftercare.'
Policy makers have the task to organize an appropriate aftercare offer within adoption procedures. In addition, it is up to us, social workers and other care providers, to be familiar with the complex reality of adoptees and metisses. It is up to us to recognize our skills and ignorance. It is up to us to guarantee the right to aftercare.