When you have adopted a child, you are faced with many issues. One of them is whether or not to share the circumstances of their adoption with others.

When we adopted our first child from Viet Nam, I remember reading a book about keeping the adopted child’s history private. It had never occurred to me to keep any information confidential prior to reading that. I was 21 years old. At the time I felt very mature and capable. When I look back on it, I realize how young I was. I made a lot of mistakes as a new mom, but I am proud to say that I was mature enough to follow the wise counsel to not share my children’s information with others. It upset quite a few people in my life; most especially my mother. My friends and family members loved our child, too. They were curious about her past and wanted to know what we knew. When I refused to divulge my daughter’s story, I hurt feelings. At times it was hard to keep quiet, but I reminded myself that it was not my story to tell. It was my daughter’s. She was too young to make the decision who should know what, and as her mother, I was responsible for protecting her in this way.

Why should adoptive parents withhold information? First of all, it is not ours to share. We do not know how our children will feel about various aspects of their adoption story. We do not know what they want public knowledge and what they feel should always remain private. We do not want our children bombarded by people who know personal things about them. They would most likely be too young to handle the situation. Nothing irritates me more than when people ask my children personal questions about their adoption. (I have had adults in authority ask my children personal questions that they did not want to answer, but felt they had to. It would’ve been much worse if these rude adults had been privy to pre-adoption history, and brought it up with my children.) Our children have a right to privacy. Until they are old enough to choose what to share, we need to keep their story to ourselves.

In some situations, information can or should be shared. We adopted a 9.5 year old and a 4 year old from Ethiopia over two years ago. They are biological siblings. They were raised by their birth mother until her death. They like to talk about their mother and their past with us and others close to us. It would be silly for me to refuse them the right to speak of these things on the basis that it is too private, or that they are not yet ready to share this information. Out of necessity, we have shared a fair amount of their story. They are in charge of what is shared and what isn’t. Sometimes they are fine with talking about their birth mother and life in Ethiopia, while at other times they are not. We let them take the lead.

Of course everyone is entitled to live their life the way they feel is best. As for my family, we choose to err on the side of caution, and keep as much of our children’s stories private as we can.