This item on Yahoo News creeped me out… two-fold:
Finding on Facebook
Dana Lowrey has known she was adopted for as long as she can remember. And for almost as long - about 30 years - she had been looking for what she calls her "first family." She combed through county records, searched the online adoption registries and enlisted the help of reunion experts. On Jan. 10, she set up a Facebook page and asked the friends she had made in the adoption community to help her search. Within 24 hours, she was in touch with her birth mother, Mary Stark. And by Jan. 15, she had made contact with her biological dad, Kenny Morse.
In retrospect, Lowrey, a 41-year-old nurse who is raising two kids of her own in Roseville, Calif., is not sure why it took her so long to use social-networking sites to trace her birth parents. In 2008 she used MySpace to connect with the son, Tim Daugherty, she'd given up for adoption 19 years earlier.
Of all the relationships that are being changed by Facebook and other sites that trade on bringing people together, the thorny, delicate bonds that connect what's known in adoption circles as the triad - the biological family, the child and the adoptive parents - may be the most profoundly altered.
Facebook creeps me out in general. And while I’m glad it is helping birth families and adoptees reconnect, it just feels wrong that there isn’t more personal contact before they learn the details of each other’s lives and see each other’s faces. I know, lots of reunions have begun with email and moved on from there. I guess I’m old fashioned… my reunion more than 14 years ago began with a phone call, proceeded into letters (and more phone calls), and within 10 days, meeting in-person.
Can you guess the second thing that got to me? That the adoptee had also relinquished a child for adoption.
You’ll never convince me that there are no patterns in adoption. That it repeats itself. Not always, but too often.
3 comments:
I just wanted to point out that the article is not entirely accurate.
Dana set up a FaceBook group to gather as many Search Angels as possible to use what information she had and find her mom. At the time, she only had a last name and knew that she had siblings (genders and approx. ages).
Mostly, we combed through the California Birth Index. What broke the case wide open was someone RECHECKED the reunion database on Adoption.com and found Dana's mother's listing. The contact information was too old - but we had a FULL NAME.
Within minutes, she had contact information. Initial contact WAS made by phone, not on FaceBook.
Your concerns speak to how people are very ignorant to the security settings on facebook and other applications.
My facebook is secured - because I know how to do this and understand how the settings work. The average person often doesnt.
And oddly, to your point again, I wouldnt mind if my daughter found my facebook (where should would find nothing cuz its not viewable).
I wish she could/would.
She of course (as you know) could read my blog (she doesnt she avoids it since it makes her puke) or see other things about me online. I am not embarassed or ashamed of any of my online stuff. They all represent me - good, bad or otherwise.
BUT...again, to your point, I have seen my daughters sites and I dont always like what I see. How much of that is really her? How much is me misinterpreting electronic communications because I have never been granted the opportunity for a face to face to see what she is really like in person.
Interesting debates, pros and cons boths ways.
And the patterns? Oy. Something I have been meaning to blog about but it cuts me close. I must do it soon. Its a good topic. I have some fascinating (at least to me) experience here. BUT the pattern is changing in the cases I will reference.
Thank you, Gaye. I am constantly amazed at how much misinformation is out there. And in this case, not verifiable except by folks like you who were involved.
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