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In terms of biology, parents are everything. Nearly everything about us from our nose, to our eye color, to our height is decided by genetics. Our genetics come from our birth parents, 50% from the female and 50% from the male so it’s often natural to want to know as much about our birth parents as possible.
Therefore, if for any reason you have no contact with your birth parents it can be perfectly normal to want to reach out to them and even to want to reconnect.
There are many reasons that an individual could not know the exact location of their birth parents, one of the most common is adoption, adoption is a fairly common process and is used when the biological parents are not in the right position to care for their baby or child.
In these situations adoption is used to match the child with a couple or individual who will take legal custody of them and care and provide for them, these people are known as adoptive parents.
There are also plenty of other reasons that an individual could not know where their birth parents are these could include but are not limited to, having a falling out with them later in life, being raised by a single parent and not knowing where the other one is, being raised by grandparents, losing contact over time due to moving out of the area, a job or military commitments.
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Regardless of how you got to this point and why you want to find your birth parents, finding a starting point can be really difficult. If your friends and family have never been in this position you may feel like no one understands and like there is no one to turn to.
Hopefully, this guide on how to find birth parents can help to shake this feeling and help you to find them.
- Birth Certificate – This may sound like a basic starting point but if you have never had contact with one or both of the birth parents that you are trying to find then you may not even know their names. Your birth certificate could potentially hold the key to finding your birth parents by providing you with their name and address from the time that you were born. Obviously they could have changed their name by now and there is a good chance that they will have moved but it’s a start. There is also a chance that your birth certificate will not contain the details of both of your birth parents but it is always worth a check.
- Social Media– Social media has created many awful things that have led to devastating consequences however, some of the good that these sites have led to should not go ignored. Social media can be a fantastic way of finding people including birth parents. In fact social media is such a good way of tracking people down that some Police departments even use it for this purpose. To use social media to help you to find your birth parents all that you need to do is create a post. This post can then be shared far and wide and will hopefully reach your birth parents or somebody that knows them. You could also try posting in groups that may be able to help or that your birth parents could be linked to.
- A Specialist Company– There are now many specialist companies that can help you to track down people who you are trying to find for the right reasons. Usually how this will work is you will give the details of the person that you are trying to find and they will try to find them. If they are successful in finding them they will then reach out to them and ask if they would like contact with you if they say yes the company will then arrange an exchange of details between both parties. It is important to use trusted websites for this and to be aware that there could be a cost involved.
Get started learning more about your birth parents with an AncestryDNA test
- Contact Others– Sometimes the simplest tactics can be the most effective. If you have any links to your birth parents then it could be a great idea to try and contact those. For instance, if you are still in contact with a relative that could be in contact with them then it could be a great idea to ask them if they have any information. Furthermore, it does not have to be a relative, if there is a local Priest, teacher, baker or other community based person that is likely to know who your birth parents are or where they are then it could be a good idea to make contact with them.
- Search Engines– Search engines are now a part of our daily lives and it can be easy to forget just how useful they can be. It may sound simple but it could be a great idea to search your birth parents names and perhaps their hometown and see if this brings any results. Results could include a link to any social media accounts, any business related websites (which could help you to contact them through their place of work) or even anything in their wider community that they could be involved with.
- The News– The News comes in many formats such as online, printed and on the radio. The whole idea of the news is that it keeps us up to date with any big events both locally and globally. Therefore, if your birth parents have been involved in anything newsworthy then this could be a great avenue to take. Simply searching for their name on Google News could bring back dozens of results such as any crimes committed, charity work completed, hospitalisation or work related incidents. This could be a particularly useful platform if you lost contact with your birth parents due to incarceration.
Final Thoughts
Overall, it is important to note that finding your birth parents may be a difficult task both mentally and physically. It is also important that you prepare yourself for all outcomes.
When you feel ready to start looking, the above options could provide a great starting point, it’s a good idea to use as many of the above options as possible along with countless others that we have not mentioned.
In order to have the best chance of finding them you should try to use lots of different resources.
Get started learning more about your birth parents with an AncestryDNA test
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