There are countless reasons why a birth parent can make the difficult decision of giving their child up for adoption. There are even more reasons why they might give anything to be reunited once they feel ready and able to do so. However, unless the adoption was open, it can be all too easy to lose track of your son or daughter after they have joined their adoptive family. They may receive a different name, move to a different state, and seemingly vanish without a trace. However, there are things you are always going to know about this person with whom you will always share a unique biological connection. For example, you can always search for your adopted child by their birth date. This is something that can never change and no one can take this essential part of your shared history away from you.
On the surface, the search process for your birth child can be truly disheartening. Accessing adoption records by petitioning state institutions can be next to impossible in a closed adoption. However, there is also a faster, easier way to try to find your adopted child, especially when you have very few details to go on.
Online adoption reunion registries constitute voluntary adoption records where people who are searching for their birth family share their identifying information securely, in hopes of finding a lost relative. And the greatest benefit of our adoption reunion registry is that if your birth child is registered to the platform, you know that they have initiated a search for you as well.
What is Adopted.com?
Adopted.com is the world’s largest international adoption reunion registry, with over 1.1 million members who are also searching for their birth family. The story of Adopted.com spans almost two decades of piecing together the little information its users could obtain about the relatives they seek and using it to reunite thousands of families. Our platform is simple and user-friendly even if you’re not a computer wiz and it allows you to look for your lost family members from the comfort and safety of your own living room. Moreover, it offers several different ways to search for the one you seek, making it easier to find your adopted child by birth date alone. Here is all you need to know about how you can do that:
Frustrated by the challenges of finding your adopted child? At Adopted.com, we simplify the search process. Create a free profile today to find your adopted child.
Try an adoption search by birth date using profile matching
Right after registering for free to Adopted.com, there comes the most important step in starting your adoption reunion journey: filling in a simple, yet crucial 10-item questionnaire. The questions are really easy to answer, as all you need to do is provide any information you may have about your child and the event of their adoption. Even if you don’t have much knowledge about who or where they may be now, you could probably never forget the date and place where they were born or where they joined their adopted family.
Once your 10-question form is completed, the Adopted.com proprietary algorithm will instantly scour our entire database and match the information you have provided against that volunteered by other members. So if your child had already joined our platform and entered their birth date, their year of adoption and the state where the event took place, it will be very easy for our software to detect the similarities in the data you both provided and it will instantly let you know it has found a match. Additionally, if we have any close matches we aren't certain about, we provide those as well, for you to review for yourself.
Find your adopted child by birth date using Namesearch
Registering to our platform and creating a profile to find out if you have any matches is completely free. However, if you choose to become a paid subscriber of Adopted.com, you can benefit from a very special search tool, called Namesearch. It works a little like your average search engine: you simply enter any information you have - in this case, your adopted child’s birth name or birth date and it will search for any mention of that date in the Adopted.com database. You can then apply filters to narrow down the results, such as the state where the adoption took place.
Should this feature not yield the expected results, you can also choose to search the 8 billion historical records made available by MyHeritage. While the term historical may lead you to think about your ancestors rather than your descendants, they can also contain recent newspaper articles, photographs or family tree profiles uploaded by members. This gives you a chance to access an entirely different pool of data than the Adopted.com member profiles provide, increasing your chances of finding valuable leads about your birth son or daughter.
What happens after I am matched with my adopted child?
This experience may be come after years of doubts, uncertainty, cold leads, and frustrating, sterile bureaucracy, just as you were trying one last thing before giving up. Or you may be one of the lucky ones who struck reunion gold on their first try. Regardless, while you can rest easy that the tension of the search has ended, you are about to embark on a whole new journey, with its own potentially emotional challenges while rebuilding bridges after finding your biological family member.
Once the match has been confirmed, you are free to contact your adopted child as soon as you feel ready to do so by sending them a direct message right within our platform. Should they choose to respond, you can exchange contact information and arrange the most suitable ways to build and explore your relationship, at your own pace and on both your terms. And seeing that your child had also joined Adopted.com, there is a significant chance they will be open to making contact and they may be psychologically prepared to be contacted by their birth family.
What can you do if your adoption search by birth date fails?
If, however, you have searched by birth date through every available method and had no positive results, don’t be discouraged yet. Searching for a child given up for adoption can be draining and every new dead end can make you feel more and more hopeless. But there are still some things you can try to help you stay strong, get the care you need and perhaps even bring you closer to your goal:
Try uploading your DNA data
Sometimes, genes speak louder than words. Taking a DNA test from any major service (MyHeritage, Ancestry DNA, FamilyTree or 23andMe) will allow you to upload your DNA data to the Adopted.com platform. If any biological relative has done the same, you can be easily matched based on your genetic profile alone. So if your adopted child has provided no information about their birth date, as long as they have also uploaded their own genetic profile, you will receive a lead through DNA comparison.
Practic patience and self-kindness
Even if your adopted son or daughter has not yet joined Adopted.com, it doesn’t mean they won’t do so in the near future. Our user base is ever-growing and every new day brings a chance of getting that long-expected match. Waiting can be difficult and frustrating, but it is also a chance to ponder about what a reunion will bring to your life and how it will influence you as a person. Keep in mind that adoption reconnection starts with self-connection, so the more time you have to prepare emotionally for the big moment, the more confident and deliberate you will become.
Don’t go at this alone
While you may have the support of your nearest and dearest, remember that it can take a village to find a child. And being among others who have shared your experience - with all the bright hope and crushing disillusionment it can entail, can make you feel truly seen and understood. Joining a support group for mothers separated from their children, or simply relying on the friendly shoulder of the Adopted.com community can give you strength, validation and resilience to cope with all that may be lying ahead.
Whatever the outcome of your search might be, we at Adopted.com will be with you every step of the way to provide caring support, to make sure your search experience is smooth and rewarding and when you finally find your match, to rejoice wholeheartedly at your reunion. Until that day comes, we celebrate your courageous journey and are grateful for being a part of it.
