Facebook can be a great way to keep in touch with living family members. But, what if your family isn’t ready to connect with you yet? Time Magazine recently did an article discussing the potential of using facebook to find one’s birth parents, or to find children who had been adopted by another family.
If you have ever used facebook, you are already aware of how easy it is to find people you want to connect with. You can use their friend finder tool to locate people you went to high school with, former and current co-workers, and family members that you have lost touch with. Facebook will suggest people who you might also know. If you listed your high school, college, or workplace into your profile, facebook will suggest people that also have listed the same things. There is even a family tree application you can use to connect up your family members who you found on facebook. Usually, these aspects of facebook are seen as good things, because it makes it easier to find the people you want to find.
However, when viewed from the perspective of adoption, these same facebook tools can be a source of stress. Time Magazine had an article called “Adoption 2.0: Finding Mom on Facebook”. This article brings up both the positive and the negative potential of what might happen when facebook is used to find birth parents, or to find children that had been put up for adoption.
If the timing is right, this may work out well. The problem arises due to the speed at which connections can be made on facebook. A high schooler who decides one day to seek out his or her birth parents might find them. Contact might be made in an instant, before anyone has had the chance to think things over, and really process the possibilities that may happen in such situations, or to prepare for the emotional aspects of this experience. It can be too much, too fast.
Some birth parents are not ready to be found, or do not want to be found at all. The article mentioned an example of birth parents who are “living in fear” of being found, because they have a facebook account, and the child is now old enough to have one too. Parents who have adopted a child, and not yet told the child that she was adopted, have concerns as well. They don’t want the child’s birth parent to suddenly contact the child through facebook, before the child has matured enough to handle that kind of news.
Image by Marco Paköeningrat on Flickr