New York Times Article

In yesterday's New York Times magazine there was an article about the families of children adopted internationally looking for their children's birth families. One mother told of her Chinese daughter, who sent balloons up into the air towards China each year along with a message for her birthmother, assuring her that she had a good life in America. When the mother searched for her daughter's birth family, she learned first that the birth mother was dead, and the man claiming to be the father (he said he had an affair with the birth mother) failed a DNA test. The daughter was heartbroken and the mother now longs for the days when they optimistically sent balloons to China...

I have mixed feelings about the concept of finding birthparents. On the one hand I respect the need for (some) adoptees to know where they came from, to have some connection to the people to whom they are biologically connected, and even to know pragmatic things such as medical history. On the other hand, the reality of those connections can be devastatingly disappointing. I can't imagine the disappointment of people searching for birthmothers who ultimately reject them or, in one of the situations described in the article, basically just want to get money. Or to find a birth family with whom communication is difficult, not only because of language differences, but because the cultural differences are impossible to overcome.

It's a tough question. What are your thoughts?