Every year hundreds of New Zealand children are adopted - some by strangers and others by extended family.
Although secrecy once surrounded adoptions, most now happen in an open environment where families share information and often maintain contact.
Where the relationship is not an easy one, reunions may not happen until the child is an adult.
Many children adopted during the 1960s and 1970s, when adoptions were at a peak, have yet to meet their birth parents.
Mary Iwanek, national manager of adoptions for Child, Youth and Family, says that for years the stance on adoption was the least known the better.
In the 1960s and 1970s, when adopted people started asking about their birth parents, they were considered unstable or unhappy with their adopted family.
But, over time, recognition grew that people needed to know their origins and adopted parents had to be able to answer their children's questions. Birth parents also wanted to know about their child's welfare.
Today, about 90 per cent of adoptions are open adoptions where both sets of parents exchange information at the time the child is placed. Future contact also is sorted out.
Closed adoption requires a specific reason, such as the child being the result of rape or incest.
Although numbers of adopted children have dropped thanks to factors that include changing attitudes to single mothers, the availability of contraception and the domestic purposes benefit, Ms Iwanek says adoption is not impossible now.
In the year to June, 215 couples were on the waiting list and 104 children were placed.
Birth parents, usually the mother, choose the adopted parents from the CYF waiting list.
An increasing proportion of children are being placed with extended family, sometimes people unable to have children.
The Adult Adoption Information Act, 1985, lets closed-adoption people and their birth parents receive identifying information about each other when the adopted person turns 20.
If the child was adopted before March 1, 1986, the child or the birth parents can place a veto on the birth registration to stop identifying information being given out.
Ms Iwanek says that more than 70 per cent of people adopted before 1986 have made some use of the Adult Adoption Information Act and most want to meet their birth family.
Patricia Stroud, an independent counsellor for CYF, says once a person obtains his or her original birth certificate, the search for birth parents may be as simple as looking up a phonebook or an electoral roll.
Whether or not the adopted person writes or rings first, she advises people to be discreet because a birth parent often has a family unaware of the adopted child.
Whoever initiates contact also needs to bear in mind that it may come as a shock to the other person. They may need time to consider meeting and the sort of contact they want.
Adopted parents can fear a child will like their birth parents more than them.
"Adopted people, from my experience, are very loyal to their adopted parents," Mrs Stroud says. "They don't want to hurt them and that's why a lot of them leave it until their [adopted] parents die."
Adopted people can have feelings of anger and rejection but, she says, many sympathise with birth mothers, who often were young and forced into the decision.
Karren Beverley, a trustee on the Adoption Counselling, Education and Research Trust, says a reunion can be a rollercoaster time and advises taking it slowly.
"It's like going into a dark tunnel. People expect they are going to find their birth family and be reconnected, but you don't know what you are going to find at the end."
At first there will often be a honeymoon period, but that is unlikely to last and, like many family relationships, may not be easy, she says. There will be feelings of guilt, sadness, rejection and anger to grapple with.
Geography and personal circumstances can make contact difficult.
The adopted child may find affinity with a family member and not their birth parents.
A reunion can also change family dynamics, particularly for other siblings.
But she says it is empowering for people to carry out their search.
They may discover they have brothers and sisters or similar talents and interests to their birth parents. "Really, what people are wanting is an identity. We all want to know where we have come from."
Another mother in the past
By REBECCA WALSH
Darlene Teyoung grew up knowing she was adopted.
At night, her family would read from a story book they had made up about their adopted daughter and sister.
But it wasn't until her teens that the Avondale woman started thinking about finding her birth parents.
Because she was the only brown-haired, brown-eyed member of a blonde and blue-eyed family, there had always been questions.
"When you are a kid, you adapt and take it in your stride. It wasn't until my adolescence that I had a desire to search - that's when you are trying to put your identity together."
Her adopted parents discouraged her, saying it might be "opening a can of worms".
When she turned 20, she was legally entitled to receive information about her birth parents. So began what was to be a relatively easy search for her mother in Australia.
The first phone call was terrifying, but overwhelmingly positive, she says. "It was really emotional and very strange. You don't know how to deal with it. It's not like there's any rule book of 'what do you say next'."
She discovered that her birth mother was 19 when she came to New Zealand on a working holiday. Within months of her arrival, she was pregnant after a fleeting relationship.
Not ready to be a mother, she adopted her baby daughter out without seeing her.
Years later, she moved back to Australia and did not tell any of her family about the child she left behind.
Before meeting her birth mother, Mrs Teyoung met her birth father and grandmother, who were living in Auckland.
"I felt a connection with my grandmother strangely enough. When I rang her, her reaction was incredible. She said, 'I still remember the day I went to see you, you were the most beautiful baby. You had your hands on your chest like you were praying'. It was so easy to slide into being her granddaughter."
The relationship with her birth parents has also been a positive experience. She has discovered a half-sister, who is a "real treat", and enjoys no longer being an only child.
She keeps in contact with both her birth parents, but is sensitive about discussing them around her adopted parents.
Mrs Teyoung would encourage any adopted person to make contact with their birth parents but says that for her it is an emotional journey she expects to be making for the rest of her life.
Not all adopted children want to meet their birth parents. One Auckland woman, who adopted a baby in the early 1970s, remembers the phone call from Social Welfare saying her son's parents wanted to make contact.
"I was at work when they rang. I felt insecure, frightened and frightfully upset," she says.
Although her son did not want to meet his birth parents a letter arrived soon after with information about the couple, who had later married, and their family.
The woman says that 10 years on she would feel more at ease about her son seeing his birth parents.
Child, Youth and Family
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