A poignant and disturbing article by Larissa MacFarquhar for The New Yorker on the difficulties faced by adult adoptees.

Deanna, for example, talks about how being adopted means you “first have to lose your entire family”.

MacFarquhar writes about the different generations of adoptees in the US, such as those from the “Baby Scoop Era”, unmarried woman compelled to “relinquish” babies between the end of WWII and the passing of Roe v Wade in 1973. The majority of these would have been closed adoptions, whereas the most recent generation have open adoptions.

She covers the history of adoptions from Korea, driven initially by Christians and often involving the adoption of children from orphanages who had living parents.

MacFarquhar says: “You can divide adoption into three main categories: plausibly invisible…in which a child is adopted by parents of the same race; transracial adoptions; and international adoptions.”

Also discussed is the “re-homing adoption adoption market, for children whom parents had adopted but didn’t want anymore, or couldn’t keep.”