The Adoption Trauma Spectrum

08/27/2026

Historically, the stories that have shaped the adoption narrative have been created and told through the lens of adoptive parents and agencies - those who benefit most directly from the status quo.

These stories frame adoption as a a singular and complete act, protective in nature, and ending at placement. But adopted people speak for themselves, different truths emerge.

The Adoption Across the Lifespan Study, launched October 2025, is the largest adoptee-centered survey of its kind:

→662 adult adoptees
→19 birth countries
→46 U.S. states

What did they say?

→ 39.9% describe their adoption as traumatic — the single most common response.
→ Only 6.1% described it as positive. Fewer than 1 in 16.
→ Adoption trauma occurs across the lifespan, along a spectrum of predictable milestones that may be activated or reactivated long after placement.
→ The biggest predictor of distress? Meaning making.

The meaning a person makes of their adoption predicts their distress better than any demographic or placement facts in their file.

The Adoption Trauma Spectrum maps these predictable activation points, and the Lifespan Activation Framework maps them across domains, while naming what actually builds resiliency:

→ validation → truth-telling → community → centering adoptees

This is the shift adoptees are calling for. From asking "did the placement work for the family?" to asking "what does the adopted person carry across a lifetime?"

Because the most credible witnesses to adoption are adopted people themselves.

Swipe through to learn more about the framework. 🖤

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© 2024-2026 Ashley M. Toland, DSW, LCSW. All rights reserved.
This work is part of the Adoption Across the Lifespan Study and is the intellectual property of Ashley M. Toland, DSW, LCSW. No part of this material may be reproduced, distributed, shared, or transmitted in any form or by any means — including screenshots, reposting, or electronic or mechanical methods — without proper attribution to the author or prior written permission from the author.

08/26/2026

Friends, I have heard you loud and clear and what I'm realizing is that I need to work on my communication.

I have read all of your concerns, and I want to address them directly now, because the pain underneath them matters, so let me start here:

Adoption trauma is real - I know it, I live it, and I will never stop talking about it.

Some of you heard "moving away from Adoption Trauma Spectrum" as "trauma isn't real," "we're erasing what happened to us," or "the whole page is changing." None of that is what this is.

The page isn't changing. The trauma doesn't go away. The ATS doesn't go away, it stays right at the center. What's evolving is the framework we use to address that trauma individually and systemically.

This is not a replacement. It's an addition. The Adoption Trauma Spectrum is still the foundation everything is built on. What the Adoption Lifespan Activation Framework does is wrap a mechanism around that center: a way for adoptees, clinicians, policy makers, etc., to take those activation points and propel our own well-being and the system itself toward change.

Think of it this way. The ATS names the what happened and the where it lives across a life. The framework is the engine, the thing that lets us do something with it, individually and collectively. One holds the truth of the wound. The other is how we push forward from it. We need both, and neither cancels the other out.

The framework, born from the ATS, is not intended to minimize anyone's experiences or pain. The spectrum still holds every activation point; the framework makes room for resilience, community, and the growing body of adoptee-centered research, clinical practice, and policy.

So: same page, same spectrum, same commitment to the reality of adoption trauma.

To those who participated in the study and have followed this page that are feeling disappointed, abandoned, or betrayed - I am sorry. I realize I did not communicate effectively and I own that.

Your trust in me throughout this process means everything, truly. Your support and encouragement has been my strength through a deeply personal process that has been incredibly humbling, emotional, and challenging. I ask that you remember our interactions because they were authentic. My stance has not changed.

I am uploading the new banner and framework image to give you all a sense of what this direction really looks like. And if this still sits wrong with you, I want to hear it. I just ask that you hear me too: nothing is being taken away, this is just another layer.

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08/19/2026

👏👏👏

I debated whether to share this recent comment from an adoptive parent here at AR in response to my first "chosen" post , but I decided to share it with the person's identity removed because it illustrates something important.

This is the kind of response adoptees often receive when we speak honestly about adoption.

“Why can't you just be happy?”
“Grow up and move on.”
“You aren't special.”
“Life is hard for everyone.”

Let's talk about this.

Talking about something painful does not mean someone is miserable.

Examining something that happened to you does not mean you are consumed by it.

Acknowledging loss does not mean you are incapable of gratitude.

And talking honestly about adoption does not mean you expect a “perfect, spotless life without even a moment of discomfort.”

Those are false choices.

An adoptee can have a beautiful life and still have questions about adoption. We can love our adoptive family and still grieve what was lost. And we can be emotionally healthy and still examine how relinquishment, separation, identity, sealed records, family disconnection, lack of medical history, or adoption language affected us.

An adoptee can be grateful for people in their life without being required to be grateful for every circumstance that brought those people into their life.

And yes, biological children can have terrible parents. Biological children can experience abuse, neglect, abandonment, trauma, family dysfunction, and tremendous loss. No one here has suggested otherwise.

But when someone talks about an experience specific to adoption, responding with “other people suffer too” doesn't actually address what was said.

Imagine responding to someone discussing infertility by saying, “People with children have problems too.”

Or responding to someone grieving the death of a parent by saying, “People whose parents are alive have problems too.”

Of course they do.

But their suffering doesn't make the first person's experience irrelevant.

This is one of the reasons Adoptee Restoration exists.

For generations, many adoptees received some version of:

Be grateful.
You were chosen.
Your parents wanted you.
You had a better life.
Don't dwell on the past.
Why does biology matter so much?
Why can't you just be happy?
Move on.

And now, when adoptees finally begin examining some of these narratives publicly, we're sometimes characterized as angry, bitter, ungrateful, miserable, or obsessed with adoption.

But perhaps we're not witnessing adoptees suddenly becoming miserable. Perhaps we're witnessing adoptees finally feeling free enough to talk. There is an enormous difference.

And while I'm at it, I want to address something else. Adoptive parents are welcome here. Biological parents are welcome here. Spouses and friends of adoptees are welcome here. Anyone who genuinely wants to understand the adoptee experience is welcome to listen and learn.

But Adoptee Restoration is an adoptee-centered space.

That means an adoptee will never be told here to “grow up and move on” for talking about adoption.

They will never be told that they “aren't special” because other people have suffered too.

And they will never be required to prove that their entire life was terrible before they're allowed to acknowledge that something about adoption hurt.

Life is hard for everyone.

And adoptees are still allowed to talk about adoption.

Because both things are true.

07/27/2026

I am so excited for this opportunity to present my research on adoption across the lifespan with my fellow social workers and social work students from Louisiana.

Thank you to Leeny Cee, former professor extraordinaire, for the invitation!

07/12/2026

It has been a privilege to spend the last week in Porto with colleagues and friends presenting data from my study on adoption trauma at the International Conference on Adoption Research.

I am so proud of the work we are doing and can't wait until I can share results broadly.

A special thank you to the Chair of the 9th ICAR,
Maria “Nini” Barbosa Ducharne for helping with organization and promotion and Beth Neil and the Rudd Foundation for sponsoring a beautiful dinner for adoptee researchers to gather, network, and build community. We had a fantastic turnout and I could not be more fired up to be part of such an amazing group of people from around the globe!

The work being done by our fellow adoptees and some non-adopted researchers is inspiring and gives me hope for a better future. Still, there is much work to do, as the othering of adoptees and the minimizing of the adopted experience continues.

Even in spaces centered on adoption research, many hold the duality of adoptive parent-researcher, oftentimes without disclosing positionality, placing the adopted person under a microscope, a subject to be studied. Not an equal partner, nor an expert on the issue.

I found myself drifting during some presentations, imagining myself presenting data on the lived experiences of adoptive parents, presenting myself as the expert on their lives, my data gathered primarily from adoptees. Can you even imagine the uproar? Not that there is a body of research on adoptive parents.

Perhaps that should change.

But that is precisely why this movement is so important. While many adoptive parent researchers and organizations are working hard to help adoptive families and children, the difference is that most adoptee researchers are working to heal the community, prevent unnecessary family separation altogether, and protect the most basic human rights of adoptees.

Adopted people in the UK recently received an apology for the forced adoption era after a grassroots movement led by adopted people compelled politicians to acknowledge the truth we have carried for generations. And while that apology does not undo the harms caused by that system, it is a beginning.

There are some amazing researchers advocating for adoptee rights – Angela Tucker, JaeRan Kim, Hollee McGinnis, Bonni Goodwin, Gina Samuels, Amanda Baden, Maureen Boyle, Nancy Rolock, Joan Blakey, Beth Neil, Oh Myo Kim, and more.

If you are an adopted person in the US, I urge you to engage with this research and reach out to your legislators, especially in states like Utah, where infants are sold to the highest bidder and birth mothers are treated like cattle.

Following the final session, I found myself questioning where I fit into the world of adoption research as it is now. Standing outside, overlooking the Douro River, a fellow adoptee, my friend and colleague, approached and shared she had been feeling the same.

Validation.
I was not alone.
I wasn't too sensitive.

Our strength is in our numbers, this growing adoptee community, and our power lies in the truth of our lived experiences. Together, we will ignite change.

06/26/2026

I am so proud to be part of the team at Adoptee Mentoring Society!

One thing I've learned through my own lived experience and my research is the importance of the adoptee community and that is exactly what Angela Tucker has created at AMS - community.

To learn more about AMS, the work we are doing, and how this helps adoptees and adoptive families, check it out!

HOME · ABOUT “AMS has brought me a community and allowed me a space to freely express my thoughts about my adoption without having to justify myself.”— SARA CORWIN, MENTEE Built by the people it serves.The Adoptee Mentoring Society exists because adoptees deserve more than good intentions. Th...

06/23/2026

Hello all! Please see below for an opportunity to share your story with a documentary filmmaker from North Carolina...

📽️ CALLING FOR STORIES — DOCUMENTARY RESEARCH

My name is Meg Daniels, and I'm an educator and filmmaker in NC. I am currently researching for my new short documentary about post-Roe v. Wade adoption. As part of my research, I've been extensively studying the Baby Scoop era. I have spoken with three women who were forced to relinquish during that era, and one or more may participate in the film.

I would like to incorporate one or more stories from women in the post-Roe era (after 2022) who became pregnant, were unable or did not want to keep the baby (financial, etc. reasons) but were forced to carry to term and relinquish because abortion is no longer an option in their state.

This would be a short film, approximately 30 minutes long. I plan to use voice-over only (no on-camera interviews are planned at this time) and observational style filmmaking as my methodology. Therefore, I don't have to reveal anyone's identities (names or faces). Legal contracts would be written to protect all participants.

Another angle I'm interested in is the birth fathers who did not have a voice during the Baby Scoop era despite their best efforts to support the birth mother. I've read about and heard stories from women who relinquished during the Baby Scoop era that the birth fathers wanted to marry them and become a family. Some of the birth fathers' families were willing to care for the child, but their rights were completely dismissed by the parents of the pregnant, u***d mother. They made all of the decisions for their daughter, especially if she was underage. The women pleaded with their parents to let them keep their baby, but at that time, many families did not want the stigma that came with pregnancy out of wedlock. Not many stories about the birth fathers are circulating out there.

Please feel free to contact me via Facebook messenger, LinkedIn, or email: [email protected]. My LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/meganqdaniels.

Links to my two previous films and all my current professional information are available on LinkedIn.

Thank you!

Director and cinematographer Meg Daniels has been telling people's stories for over 25… · Experience: Elon University · Education: Wake Forest University · Location: Pittsboro · 459 connections on LinkedIn. View Megan Q. Daniels’ profile on LinkedIn, a professional community of 1 billion...

05/10/2026

Mother’s Day holds so much - pain, grief, joy, rage, relief. It’s a real beast.

For all of you, the mothers, the motherless, those estranged, those who never got to hold your mothers close, be kind to yourselves.

04/23/2026

Families in the US face an uphill battle as surveillance compounds and reproductive rights are curtailed. Add to that the broad push for a return to white Christian nationalism along with the surge in white saviorism, coupled with the manosphere and trad wife movements, and it’s hard to imagine any scenario in which supports exist for children born from unplanned pregnancies to be parented by their first parents.

The regression of our elected leaders into eugenics, forced family separation, a sense of control and ownership of women and children’s bodies, and the general lack of compassion for human suffering compounds this issue. Most recently, RFK suggested that Black children are violent (due to SSRI rx) and should be sent to “wellness farms” where they can be reparented.

Who would reparent those Black children?

NOT their parents.

We are all frogs and the water is boiling.

Today, adoption is a billion-dollar industry, with an estimated 1–2 million people waiting to adopt at a given time. Cutting this demand would require making adoption, as it is currently practiced, socially and politically stigmatized. Reimagining adoption in the West requires confronting the legal infrastructure that allows for children to be purchased through a private market and families to be policed by the state.

However, the orphan-rescue story has considerable cultural and political purchase, and adoption occupies a nearly unparalleled position in American politics; the Congressional Coalition on Adoption is one of the largest bipartisan, bicameral caucuses in Congress. Adoption serves both sides of the political spectrum: It maintains the right’s ideal of the heteronormative family structure at the same time that it flatters the left’s commitment to the nontraditional “chosen family.”

Consequently, the US is becoming more “adoption-friendly,” and with a capitalist economy that produces widespread deprivation and intense demand for parentage, paired with eroding reproductive rights, it seems likely that family separation will continue, if not expand substantially, in the coming decades. To undermine this deeply entrenched structure requires, in the first instance, seeding a politics of refusal: a disorientation from the idea that there exists a right to parenthood regardless of the means required to secure it, and a rejection of the consumer demand that considers other people’s children as the answer to the desire for parenthood. Read more from M Ceniza:
http://thenation.com/article/society/us-adoption-imperialism-joshua-mast/

04/09/2026

Wow! This seems like big news, but I would love to hear from our friends who were impacted by these cruel practices.

The Church of England is planning to formally apologize for its part in one of postwar Britain's most widespread abuses of women -- the forced adoption of babies taken from unmarried mothers over a period stretching from the late 1940s into the mid-1970s. An estimated 200,000 women in England and Wales were coerced into giving up their babies during this period, though some estimates run even higher.

For roughly three decades, unmarried women who became pregnant across England were placed in what were known as mother and baby homes -- about 100 of them operated by the Church -- where they were cut off from the outside world, put to work in difficult conditions, and pressured into surrendering their newborns. The children were adopted and the mothers were expected to move on in silence. Many never did.

Jan Doyle, whose son David (pictured here) was taken away a few weeks after she gave birth, was one of them. She was 16 in 1963 when she discovered she was pregnant and was sent to a Church-operated home in Kent. "If the floors needed washing, we would have to get down on our hands and knees, even though we were pregnant," she told the BBC. "I think I was down on my hands and knees the day before my son was born." After her son David was removed from her care as an infant, it would be 63 years before they saw each other again -- when he tracked her down and made contact. They now see each other regularly.

In a draft of its apology obtained by the BBC, the Church said: "We acknowledge the lifelong impact of these experiences and the part the Church played in a system shaped by attitudes and behaviors that we now recognize as harmful. For the pain and trauma experienced -- and still carried -- by many women and children in Church affiliated mother and baby homes, we are deeply sorry."

The Church began looking into its own involvement with the homes in late 2024, going through its archives and hearing directly from women who lived through the system.

Dr. Michael Lambert, who researches the history of these institutions at Lancaster University, said the apology could mark a turning point: "I think it would go a significant way towards changing the narrative that we understand from the period, from one of sin and shame, to one that recognizes the enormous harm and damage these institutions did on a systematic scale to tens of thousands of women and the children that were taken from them."

Other institutions have already confronted this chapter. In 2016, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, then the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, apologized for what adoption agencies had done while operating in the Catholic Church's name. The Scottish and Welsh governments both issued formal apologies in 2023. Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland have all delivered government apologies as well -- several accompanied by redress schemes for those affected. The UK government, despite the fact that many of the homes received state funding, has never issued its own.

That may soon change. A cross-party parliamentary Education Committee report released last month urged the government to deliver what it called an "unqualified formal apology" developed in partnership with survivors. Committee chair Helen Hayes said the practices had inflicted deep and lasting harm on generations of women and their children, and that those affected "have suffered for far too long."

Prime Minister Keir Starmer told ITV News he believes there is "a very strong case for an apology" and has directed his staff to move faster on the issue -- though he has stopped short of making a firm commitment. MPs emphasized that time is running out, given that many of the women involved are now elderly.

Jan Doyle, now in her late seventies, welcomes the Church's gesture but is withholding judgment until she sees what the final apology actually says. "It was wicked the way they treated us," she said, "so it would have to be heartfelt -- one that really did hold water."

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For a powerful novella about a man who discovers what is happening behind the walls of a Church-run mother and baby home in small-town Ireland, we recommend "Small Things Like These" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780802158741 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4tGiKGb (Amazon)

For a landmark oral history of American women who were coerced into surrendering their babies for adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade, we recommend "The Girls Who Went Away" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780143038979 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/3bQtYFu (Amazon)

For the true story of an Irish mother whose son was taken from her and sold to an American family for adoption, we highly recommend "Philomena" at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780143124726 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/47Ni2hU (Amazon)

For a devastating film about three young women confined in an Irish Magdalene Laundry -- Church-run institutions where "fallen" women were forced into unpaid labor -- we recommend "The Magdalene Sisters," at https://amzn.to/4t1Prhn

For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364

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To read the BBC's original reporting on the Church of England's planned apology, visit https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2l418g418o

To read the Education Committee's full report and recommendations, visit https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/203/education-committee/news/212897/government-must-urgently-apologise-for-states-role-in-forced-adoption-mps-recommend/