The File That Lies: When Non-Identifying Information Fails

The Promise

Closed adoption offers a compromise to adoptees who want to know their origins. The state will not release names, addresses, or any details that could lead to identification. But it will provide non-identifying information.

A summary. A sketch. A portrait of their biological family, stripped of anything that might reveal exactly who they really are. It is demeaning and cruel and a tease, but for many searching adoptees, it’s all they can get.

The promise of these details sounds appealing but the reality often falls short.

Falsified from the Start

Some adoptees discover that their non-identifying information was never accurate to begin with.

One searcher discovered that her adoption was orchestrated by a baby broker and that “much of the information typed onto my nonidentifying birth record was completely falsified.” The documents she had trusted turned out to be pure fiction. The portrait of her origins was a forgery.

Betsie Norris, director of Adoption Network Cleveland, received a typed page from her adoption agency. The last line said: “There’s no medical history of any significance on either side of the family.”

Skeptical, she searched for and found her real mother at twenty-six. Five years before their reunion, her mother had been treated for malignant melanoma. Red hair, blue eyes, freckles, traits that ran in her biological family, had been absent from the file that told her “no significance.”

Single Point in Time

Non-identifying information captures a snapshot, not a life. A mom who appears healthy at the time of surrender may develop cancer five years later. A father whose file says “no known medical issues” may have a family history of heart disease that was never recorded. The information is only as good as what the agency collected and what the mother disclosed.

The agency’s idea of health history was often a single, vague line. “Everybody was in good health” served as the medical summary for countless mid-century adoptees. No follow-ups or records of conditions that developed later. Social workers closed the file and moved on.

Missing Father

Incredibly, adoption agencies facilitating closed adoption did not require a real mother to reveal the identity of her baby’s father. With only one parent needed to surrender a child, the process ran smoothly and efficiently. In one adoptee’s file, the space where the father’s name should appear read: “legally omitted.”

For various reasons, many mothers chose not to share the father’s name. General uncertainty, traumas surrounding unwed pregnancy, embarrassment, marriage avoidance, or an unwillingness to involve others all contribute to the omission. Adoptee files acknowledge the absence but offer nothing to fill the void.

Consequences of Bad Information

When adoptees cannot trust their non-identifying information, the consequences are real. One woman who reunited with her real mother learned that brain aneurysms ran in her biological family. Armed with this knowledge, she had an MRI. Had she relied only on the non-identifying information provided by the agency, she would never have known to screen for a catastrophic condition.

Another adoptee’s first child was stillborn at twenty-one weeks due to a genetic condition. His second child began having seizures as an infant. When he later met with a genetic counselor, “on the intake form, the counselor literally drew a box underneath me and drew a giant question mark in it.” Non-identifying information from his file was insufficient. He had to fight to unseal his records to learn whether his children were at risk.

Why the System Fails

The closed adoption system was designed to protect the privacy of abandoning parents and the integrity of adopters. It was never designed to serve the adopted child.

Non-identifying information was a concession, not a commitment. The agency had no incentive to verify the accuracy of the information it collected. Mothers had no incentive to reveal everything. Adoptees had no power to demand the truth.

The result is a file that may contain lies, omissions, outdated details, and mistakes that follow the adoptee for life. Non-identifying information is too often wrong, misleading, or worse. The system promised a sketch yet delivered a forgery. Just one more indignity to add to the list.