Responding to the unacknowledged trauma and disenfranchised grief in infant adoption

Abstract

Recently, there has been more attention paid to trauma related to adoption. This article addresses the unacknowledged trauma which may exist with children adopted in infancy, before they had any retrievable recollection of their first families. Because this trauma has not been recognized, there has been inadequate attention paid to the adoptee's grief at the loss of the first family. This article suggests that all sealed records laws which prevent adoptees from having access to records otherwise available to non-adoptees be repealed, that all adoptions be presumed to be open, with the possibility for ongoing contact with first family members, and that more trauma-informed and adoption-competent therapeutic resources be made available to adoptees.