ORPHAN TRAIN RIDERS — children who were placed out on trains — were sometimes encouraged to put on small performances at their many stop-overs, in order to attract an audience of potential parents. 1 This is telling because as the child is adopted, so the child can adopt certain performances. Rehearsing TRAINED TALES may play a part in the adoptee’s identity development. However, the belief in certain myths support the closed system of adoption.

The performances are designed to be sensitive to the needs of a particular audience and so shift and slide in their improvisations. Performative pretending. PRETEND AS IF you were born to your adoptive parents. Pretend as if your birth parents do not exist. Pretend as if the past does not matter.

Some adoptees frequently ADOPT the passive position of the fatalist. This can be attributed to the lack of control they feel they have in life.

“Whatever fate gives you, that’s what you’ve got.” 2

They have had no choice in their relinquishment, and little choice when attempting to retrieve their sealed genealogical or medical history. There is no control in the ‘passive’ Adoption Disclosure Registry — both the adoptee & the birthparent must be registered for there to be a match and subsequent search procedures can begin.

There is little control in an independent ‘active’ search process either. Working towards adoption reform is a way for some adoptees to regain a sense of control over their lives.

1 THE ORPHAN TRAINS - PLACING OUT IN AMERICA, Marilyn Irving Holt, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln & London, 1992 (p.49)

2 Ibid (p.182)

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