Rethinking adoption — with support

I was born in Manitoba in 1984 and adopted as an infant. From that moment, my birth name, my identity, and all legal ties to my family were erased.

The adoption system decided my identity could be rewritten — that I was “better off” with strangers — not because of abuse or neglect, but because my first mother lacked the resources and support to raise me.

Growing up, I had no language for what I felt — only a persistent sense that something fundamental was missing. I struggled with anxiety, identity confusion, and periods of deep depression, and I continue to struggle with these challenges today. Like many adoptees, I am someone responding to a profound early loss. Adoption is not a single event, but a lifelong psychological journey.

Adoption is often framed as a purely benevolent act: a simple story of rescue, gratitude, and happy endings. It is described as a way to provide children with “permanency” and love.

But this dominant narrative obscures a more uncomfortable truth. For adoptees, adoption begins with trauma — the permanent separation from one’s family at a critical stage of development — and that trauma does not simply disappear with time.

Children are not blank slates. They carry early attachments, emotional imprints, and sensory memories that remain long after adoption papers are signed. Yet adoptees are often expected to feel grateful rather than grieve, loyal rather than curious, and silent rather than complex.

Our current adoption policies prioritize helping some people build families at the cost of dismantling others — and then offer little support to the children who must live with those consequences. The desire of prospective adoptive parents to receive a child often takes precedence over the child’s right to identity, culture, and ongoing connection to their family. Such a system is classist, moving children from families with fewer resources to those with more, rather than addressing the root causes of family instability. When the system is demand-driven and rooted in inequality, family separation is normalized, instead of prevented.

Family preservation should always be the first response, with separation used only as a last resort and for the shortest time necessary. Yet for many adoptees, separation was permanent and unsupported. Most children placed for adoption were not unloved or unwanted. Many had families who needed help, not replacement.

When those bonds are severed without necessity, the emotional consequences can last a lifetime.

That cost is well documented by adoptee voices themselves. Higher rates of depression, anxiety, identity struggles, attachment difficulties, and suicidality among adoptees are not coincidences. They are predictable outcomes of early separation compounded by secrecy, lack of support, and the expectation that adoptees should simply “move on.”

Despite this, post-adoption mental health supports in Manitoba are virtually nonexistent. There is no consistent, publicly funded system of trauma-informed care for adoptees — no requirement that mental health professionals be trained in adoption-related loss, no guarantee of long-term access, and little recognition that these needs often intensify in adulthood rather than childhood.

Manitoba’s adoption laws stripped me of my birth name, my family, and my history. I was legally denied access to my own records until adulthood, and even then, the information was incomplete. For many adoptees, access to birth records remains partial, conditional, or blocked entirely by decades-old vetoes — barriers that deepen confusion, grief, and unresolved trauma.

This is not just a personal tragedy; it is a human rights issue. Every person has the right to a name, an identity, and knowledge of their family. While some legislative changes have improved access to records, these reforms remain incomplete and insufficient to address the mental health realities adoptees face.

Real adoption reform in Manitoba must include guaranteed, lifelong, publicly funded mental-health services for adoptees; trauma-informed and adoption-competent care; unconditional access to original birth records, medical histories, and birth names; and meaningful investment in family preservation so fewer children are separated in the first place. Just as importantly, adoptees must have a formal voice in shaping the policies that govern their lives.

Without these changes, adoption will continue to function not as a system of care — but as a system that creates lifelong mental health harm and leaves adoptees to navigate it alone.

Robin Quinn an adult adoptee from Manitoba and an advocate for adoptee rights.