Still on the topic of adoption!

As I had mentioned earlier, I did a Post-Graduate course in International Social Work in Melbourne many years ago. I did some research and wrote on a topic -adoption - that has been a passion of mine ever since I was a little girl. When I was still in my teens I had thought that someday I would like to adopt a child and give some parent-less child the joy of belonging. (However, I must say that I was thoroughly put off with the Indian adoption rules in those days as they said that if you adopt a child that child gets half of whatever you have when you die - and all the other children collectively get the other half. Talk about being unfair to your own child). Anyway, when I did this research for my course, I found out that in Victoria, Australia and in many other countries adoption rules were so strict in olden days, that they did not allow for parents or children to look for or try and find each other. How cruel is that? Okay, Okay, so maybe the parent could be penalized for life for having given up his/her child while they were still alive......but, to do that to a child. How awful would that be? Every human being wants to know where he/she came from. What right does anyone have to take that right away from a person? Anyway, fair or not ... that's what the law said in those days and many a child who had been adopted in that era, died without ever finding out where his/her roots came from. I forget what year that dumb rule was lifted, sometime in the 1960s or 1970s but, when it was lifted there was a deluge of both - parents who gave up their children for adoption and since wanted to find them; as well as; children who wanted to find their birth parents. Many had grown up in orphanages and had miserable lives, some had lived off the streets, some went to undesirable homes ..... but, there were also many who had found very loving and supportive parents, but, still the hankering for where their bloodline came from, caused them to want to find out. A lot of adopted children were very fortunate that the adopting parents did not mind, and, some even helped them find out about their birth parents. Some of the stories were happy reunions with the birth-parents becoming a part of their children's future lives - as friends, not parents since they had given up that right. However, I can remember reading about one poor fellow who desperately wanted to find out and talk to his mother - I think his father had already died - but this heartless birth-mother did not want to disrupt her present life (and her husband and other children did not know about this child) so she refused to meet or even talk to the son she had borne, and given away and since forgotten. How any woman can be so cruel I cannot fathom, but I won't sit in judgement of her as I do not know her circumstances. I just wonder how she can get up each day and look at her face in the mirror and like what she sees!!! It does lead me to a niggling question in my mind though .... Should she be allowed to keep quiet and stay unknown -if her child wants to know her - or does she owe it to the child to talk to him? After all she did put him on this earth and then subsequently forgot about him. I would love to have other people's opinions regarding this issue --- so if you have any thoughts please write them out for me and send them to me.:)