Among the unknowable number of people who have been adopted as newborns, there are two camps. Those who feel a kinship with their birth families, and those who don’t.
Many adoptees are happy to live with zero knowledge of their genetic forebears and birth stories. For others, whose past has been purposefully hidden, the need to know becomes an obsession. They spend huge amounts of time and money searching genealogy Web sites and offering DNA samples to hunt down their heritage. They know that many of these searches can end in heartache. Still, they press on.
