Three generations of adoption one family, three very different experiences
Clare Stanley was adopted and so was her father – and then she adopted her own children. Here she reflects on how things have changed across those three generations…
‘I had a vision of a shop where you could choose a baby’
I’ve known I was adopted for as long as I can remember. My mother used to weave the subject subtly into childhood bedtime stories, so I think at some level, I was always aware of it.
When I was five, she gave me a more detailed explanation of how I had come to be in our family. I was too young for the words to truly resonate; I went off and played in the garden, with no real understanding of what I’d been told.
I had a vision of a shop where the shelves are lined with boxes of babies and people can choose one to take home.
I’m part of a family in which adoption spans three generations. My father was adopted, he and my mother adopted me and my older sister, and I then went on to adopt two children of my own.
Of course, the experiences of the three generations have been very different.
Given away
My father, Patrick, was essentially given away to some childless neighbours by his mother when he was seven. It was a very different time. His mother was young and his father’s job in the army meant he was often away; the assumption is that she felt she couldn’t cope. He had no contact with her after that. Sadly he died a few years ago, aged 80, and he had never talked about his childhood. He and my mother, Josephine, met when they were 18. He would have done anything for her and my mother desperately wanted a family.
So, after 10 years of trying for a baby with no success, he agreed to my mother's suggestion of trying adoption.
At that time, satisfying the needs of the infertile couple was the priority, so there was no lengthy vetting process.
The authorities got in touch with a local priest, who popped over to their house unannounced one morning, just as my mother had got out of the bath! A few questions later, and they were approved to adopt.
My older sister, Kathy, was adopted first, at around six months old. Two years later, I joined the family as a threemonth-old baby. My birth mother was Irish and working as a nurse in London. She didn’t want a relationship with my birth father and had no fixed address, so adoption must have seemed >>