Map of the Week: The adoption disclosure registry

Map: Adoptees
Map: Birth parents

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This week's maps look at Ontario's adoption disclosure registry, mapping birth parents and adoptees by postal code, as a rate per 1,000 of population.

There are over twice as many adoptees (28,300) on the registry as birth parents (12,990):

About 86% of the people on both lists are still Ontario residents.

Some of our maps show an immediate, obvious pattern; these really don't, except that both are more small-town and northern than not.

Birth parents cluster in the mining belt of northeastern Ontario (North Bay, Eliot Lake, Timmins and Kirkland Lake all have clusters). In the south, inner-city Hamilton, the St. Catharines-Thorold-Niagara Falls area, London, Brantford, Sarnia, Peterborough and Oshawa have clusters; Ottawa has a cluster centred in Vanier and Westboro. Toronto doesn't really pop out on the map at all.

The adoptees are more scattered, though there are clusters in Sudbury, North Bay, Kirkland Lake and Timmins. In the south, the same St. Catharines-Thorold-Niagara Falls area pops out, as does K-W, Sarnia, Peterborough, Belleville, Kingston and Ottawa.Once again, Toronto has no visible cluster.

The data was released by the Ministry of Community and Social Services in response to an access-to-information request.

Comments

[Greg]

I would suggest that both groups seem to map roughly to regions where aboriginal population densities are higher, with the exception of off-reserve native peoples in major cities like Toronto (where access to abortion providers would presumably be markedly higher than in remote/rural communities).

I hope that this comment is taken in the spirit in which it is offered (as an honest, dispassionate attempt at interpreting the data) rather than as a social commentary of any kind whatsoever.

[Cat]

Many thanks to the Toronto Sta for posting this. As interesting as this is, people have to bear some things in mind when looking at it. Many adoptees and parents are no longer signed up with the government adoption disclosure registry for a number of reasons. Many in the past were fed-up of waiting literally years just to have their name added on to the government registry, so many of these people went to more efficient independent internet sites. Many others have reunited and their names would have been removed. Others have reunited through other means. All of these people would not show up on this map. I wonder how different this map would be if all of the above were included. It would be a difficult task to find those numbers.

Quite a few mothers were sent from their small communities in rural Ontario to the unwed mothers homes of the town and cities such as Toronto where they would have their children and then they would return to their small rural communities. They were expected by society to pretend that they had been away to visit a sick relative to hide their secret which they would be too ashamed to admit to anyone, even now.

A lot of parents would shy away from Toronto as that is the place where many surrendered their children and thus, it would be unbearable for some to stay there. The memories would be too painful for them. It is one of the reasons that Toronto does not jump out as such. I know this from personal experience.

[Paul]

Greg: Your analysis is inherently flawed, though not for the reason you feared. This map shows not absolute numbers of adoptees registering but the rate of adoptees registering per 1000 adoptions. You could conceivably argue that native adoptees and birth parents are more like to to register but certainly not without considerably more data than has been provided here.