Jean Paton, The biography of the mother of the adoption reform movement to be published this fall
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but when in the mid-1990s when I first got seriously involved in adoptee rights, I had never heard of Jean Paton. My ignorance was disabused at the Seattle AAC conference (I think it was 2000) E. Wayne Carp, who had just released his pioneering work Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption was first day keynoter. Among the special guests that day was Jean Paton. As I remember it, some of us Bastard Nationals were running around with little homemade “nametags” with Bastards are Beautiful” handprinted on them with a magic marker–mainly as a dig at the goody-2-shoes AAC crowd and, of couse, to advertise ourselves. Someone, and I don’t remember who, (maybe it was Jean) pointed out that this phrase was not original with Bastard Nation. It was an original Jean Patonism. Well, who was Jean Paton? Only the mother of the adoptee rights movement in America! That’s who! It was almost like opening your OBC and learning that you had a name and a history. As a trained historian I was shocked to learn that I hadn’t done my homework. I knew about Joanne Wolf Small, B J Lifton, Continue Reading →