Mia Parsons, a singer songwriter from Kilcoole has dealt with her past sorrows by putting her story into verse. ‘Song for my Son’ written this year is about her search for the baby she gave up for adoption twenty six years ago. Mia was 17 and still in school when she became pregnant in 1981. Her parents decided that the baby should be put up for adoption Mia reluctantly agreed. Mia was sent to stay with a family in Blanchardstown to await the arrival of her baby.
In October 1981, Mia gave birth to a baby boy in Holles Street hospital. She gave her son the name Paul Graham and looked after him for five days. When the statutory six weeks had passed she signed the necessary papers and the adoption became legal and binding.
Two years later she became pregnant again and had a daughter, Clare, and 14 months later a son, Jake. In 1987, she married and had another son. As a mother, she started thinking more about the son that she had given up. When he would have been 13-years-old, Mia contacted the agency that had organised the adoption, to enquire about him. The agency also informed Mia of their policy that birth mothers must wait 23 years.
In 2004, Mia again went back to the agency. She asked them to let her son know that she was there if he ever wanted to make contact. Many things remind Mia of saying goodbye to her son. From this sense of longing she wrote her song ‘Song for my Son’, a song she hopes one day her son will hear.
The Adoption Board have records of 47,000 adoption orders in this state since 1952. At present approx 2,000 natural mothers and 4,000 adopted adults have made contact with The National Adoption Contact Preference Register which was set up in 2005. The Adoption Board is hoping to re-launch the register with an advertising campaign that will take in Britain and America in the hope that more natural mothers in particular will come forward. So far, there have been 400 successful matches on this register. But there are still 41,000 adoptions in Ireland where no contact with either party has taken place.