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When I first heard of ABC's new reality show, Find My Family, my reaction was one of general annoyance. It's not the first time that a show has popped up on television with the intent of reuniting birth parents and their relinquished children under the watchful eye of video cameras. I have ignored them or loathed them in the past. I had little patience for them as I feel that sensationalizing the delicate and emotionally difficult process of reunion can be disastrous in the end.
Having watched three episodes, I'm now sitting on a fence of weepy indecision. Part of me still believes that we're inadvertently setting these families up for potential failure. I don't say that to be cynical or overly negative. The adoption industry has a long history of doing that to families: promising them a world of rainbows and butterflies, and then leaving them without the resources to achieve the storybook ending.
At the end of each episode there's a catch up with one of the families to see how they're doing. But they haven't yet passed the honeymoon phase of reunion. Everyone is still in awe, still reveling in the amazing act of actually locating one another. There's been no time to realize that time and differences in nurture will raise questions between one another. There's been no time for that first disagreement, the first cooling off phase and the first make up, all of which are so important for setting the tone of the rest of the relationship. We're just letting them wing it as we did when the birth mother sign the Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) and wasn't offered any counseling, before or after, her decision to do so. Sadly, counseling isn't even always offered to birth mothers in today's era of open adoptions. As I said, it's a long history of bringing up a wealth of emotion and leaving these families to flub and flouder their way through the confusing journey.
Those concerns aside, I was still overwhelmed with emotion watching the first three episodes of this show. (Another episode airs tonight on ABC at
9:00.) In fact, I was able to find three really positive things about it.
1. I really hate the sensationalism of people's emotions... but at the same time, I'm glad that they're on national television.
It's true that not every reunion is fraught with tears and hugs and moving background music while standing under a cheesily named "Family Tree" atop a huge hill. Reunions are unique for each family and each family member. We do get to see some of that uniqueness, however, in six different reunion scenes in those first three episodes. While tears usually pop out, we were able to see one that involved a lot of laughter and one that involved a moment for the adoptee to just sit, quietly, as she processed what was happening, admitting that she needed some space. We also get to see a wide range of reasoning as to why people search and the different stories that exist in the adoption world. In the third episode, the adoptee searching for her biological mother had a lot of anger. She wanted to know why she had been abandoned, which is what her legal paperwork said (a common term used at the time). When the birth mother was informed that her daughter had never been given the letter she had written for her, she broke down. It was the one thing she had been clinging to for nearly 40 years: that her daughter knew she had been loved and wanted. These are the things society doesn't know happen: that birth parents are lied to, that adoptees aren't given all the information and, in the end, real people get hurt.
In the second episode, the adoptive mother and father sat with their daughter and discussed how much they loved her and supported her. This was a unique case of the adoptee only wanting to reunite with her biological brother (and sister) and some might then argue that, sure, it was easy for these parents to offer their support. Later in the same episode, however, we got to see another mom offer her unconditional support as her daughter sought to reunite with her biological mom. I think these two separate views of parental support are important for all to see, those in society and those adoptive parents who may have to deal with this issue in the future. It doesn't have to be
