![]() ![]() Over the same time period, search and reunion have been prominent features of adoption reform and activism, and they appear as central themes in many true adoption narratives. ![]() These efforts have a long history in the United States, where the difficulties involved in such searches were, and often still are, compounded by legally mandated confidentiality and sealed records causing even adoptees themselves to be denied access to records such as original birth certificates after World War II. Using concepts from Catherine Sheldrick Ross’s “Finding without Seeking: The Information Encounter in the Context of Reading for Pleasure,” a convenience sample of 129 romance novels about secret babies is examined to determine what information is imparted about the processes by which adoptees and birth parents search for each other.Įfforts by adoptees to locate their birth parents and other natal relatives form a central theme in both fiction and nonfiction adoption narratives. The author sends her thanks to Roberta Brody at GSLIS, Queens College, and Catherine Ross, Retired, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, for help in shaping and revising this article. Chelton ( is a retired professor who formerly taught at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queen’s College, CUNY. Searching for Birth Parents or Adopted Children: Finding without Seeking in Romance Novelsĭr. ![]()
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