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Pam Hodgkins of the West Midlands Post-Adoption Service reveals that second-generation adoption, children who have been adopted giving up their own children for adoption, is surprisingly common. She explains that women who have been adopted desperately want someone who looks like them and belongs to them so are more likely to get pregnant at a very young age. Helen, who was adopted at six weeks old, has spent 14 years searching for the daughter she gave up for adoption at three and a half months. She blames her own adoption for her decision to give up her daughter.

A 44-year-old woman adopted as a baby recounts her experience of meeting her birth mother and the relief she felt at discovering that her natural mother had not wanted to give her up. A television chat show in Nov. 1996 on which a woman spoke of her regret at having been forced to give up her son for adoption provided the spur for the search. A joyous reunion between daughter and birth mother followed in Mar. 1997, but the two were separated once again when the mother died, aged 69, on Jul. 13, 1997.

Canadian singer Joni Mitchell has revealed that her decision in Dec. 1996 to begin searching for the daughter she had given up for adoption as a baby was motivated by a desire to be clean and have no skeletons. Mitchell was also influenced by having had polio as a child. Mitchell's search for the daughter she had with an art college boyfriend in 1965 ended successfully in spring 1997. Little is known about Mitchell's 31-year-old only child, other than that she has worked as a model, the publicity-shy Mitchell having decided not to make a statement until her rediscovered daughter has met all her family.

Adopted children often try to trace their natural parents, and in many cases a happy reunion results. However, it is also possible that they will face a hostile reaction from their natural parents, and this can be very hard to accept. Natural parents may not want to be reminded of their past, and have usually built up a life which does not include the child who has been adopted. In some cases, the adoptive parents can also react negatively, feeling that they have been rejected.

Adoption agencies praised UK Labour Member of Parliament Clare Short on Oct. 17, 1996, as a wonderful role model for the many women who were forced to give up their babies in the 1960s and early 1970s. Short has openly acknowledged her terrible pain and regret at giving up her son for adoption 31 years ago when she was a penniless student. Short's son, Toby Graham, began searching for his natural mother about a year ago and their mutual happiness at having found each other was unmistakable when they appeared together in public on Oct. 17, 1996.

A West Midlands, England, couple will make legal history later in 1994 by seeking a High Court revocation of an adoption order. The adoptive parents, who returned their uncontrollable adopted son to care in 1991, also hope to sue Barnardo's, the agency that placed the boy with them, for not making them aware of how disturbed the boy was. The boy, now aged 14, is in the care of Solihull council which the couple also want to sue. Two children offered to a couple by Doncaster, England, adoption agency were so disturbed that they cost the woman who took them in both her marriage and her mental health.