Saturday, January 12, 2008

Why on earth would you separate twins?

Some people may have read about the twins that were separated at birth, grew up in separately adopted families, met by pure random chance, fell in love, got married, and then learned they were twins leading to High Court annulment. I have but one question in this crazy and head screwy situation. What on earth possessed the people dealing with the adoption to separate twins? That just seems absolutely crazy to me.

I'm not saying that they could have predicted the randomness of them meeting, but surely separating twins, given what is known about twins, would have quite a psychological impact on them even though they won't remember their sibling. Would or do they separate twins today I wonder?

14 comments:

Ellee Seymour said...

Dizzy, I have a twin brother and we are quite different. There is no chance I would want to marry him. This is an extraordinary story and, how cruel to separate them this way.

Anonymous said...

Nowadays they do not separate twins and rarely separate siblings unless there is a damn good reason.

This is just indicative of the madness of the old practises and shouldn't happen again.

The important thing now is about IVF children from sperm donors. I am generally for protecting the privacy of sperm donors but this is unsustainable with the need to ensure that half-siblings and fathers do not end up in sexual relationships with IVF people.

Anonymous said...

There was an interesting report a few weeks ago about two German women from East Germany who were separated as babies (East German policy for adopted twins). One family moved to West Germany and told the adopted daughter that she was a twin but the other did not know.

At 26 the one living in the West tracked down her twin.

They are still just about identical and found that they wore similar clothes, had similar tastes, married and divorced at the same ages.

http://tinyurl.com/2pgqqe

Anonymous said...

Both parties must be totally shattered. You meet someone, you fall in love with them, you marry them, you may well be trying to start a family only to discover this.

This story is a tragedy for both and one's deepest sympathy and understanding must go to them both.

What has not been said is whether there were any chidlren from the marriage. If that is the case then social workers are probably involved- the very same social workers who decided it was best to split the two unfortunate people.

How come we entrust the well being of our children to the most venal, incompetent, mendacious and politically motivated section of governance

Newmania said...

News Now ?

Anonymous said...

The attitude to adoption has dramatically changed over the past 20-30 years. Openess is now encouraged , quite rightly. They try to keep siblings together now , if possible. However, the entire adoption process is so difficult and the problems really need to be addressed.

Little Black Sambo said...

Ellee, did you grow up with your twin brother? If so, that is may be why you would not marry him. If you had been brought up separately and met in later life, not knowing you were related, it might have been a different story.

Ellee Seymour said...

Hi LBS, yes, I did grow up with him, but I assure you he would not have been my Mr Right. We do get on well, but not that well....

Anonymous said...

[10:27] I read that story too and thought it was fascinating. They even had the same haircut. They had a lot of the same habits and tics.

Despite what Ellee says, and perhaps for the reasons Little Black Sambo mentioned, twins are the two closest human beings in the world to one another, often coming from one egg that has split. As they develop, they play with each other in the womb and cuddle each other. The policy of separating them - what on earth nightmareish socialist engineering programme was being carried out here? - is unimaginably cruel.

I think the information about sperm donors should be available somewhere in family records.

anthonynorth said...

Twins aren't separated any more, but many separated twins have taken part in various studies. The most famous are the Jim Twins. They were found out to have the same medical history, same habits and hobbies, had the same number of kids, had the same types of jobs, had holidays in the same place, had the same pets, and even had a wife with the same first name.

Anonymous said...

It depends what adoptive parents were available at that time I guess, also, this happenend back when the place was still the DDR, so any funny business was possible there -- they probably were lucky, given what kind of things could happen to orphans back then in that place.

The twins were forcibly divorced, to comply with the law and they are campaigning for the law to be changed -- since they are still in love and would like to remain together.

Given that we nowadays have contraceptives to prevent the reason for the banning of blood relative marriages, it would make more sense to allow any kind of marriage but prosecute people if they cripple their offspring with genetic inbreeding by not using donated sperm. This would solve some of the cousin marriage issues we have and also vastly cut down on the NHS bill for congenital disease, which really should be dealt with before even more children are recklessly and deliberately crippled by their parents.

Likewise, children must have the right to know the DNA of their parents, if only to be able to take advantage of the coming medical breakthroughs.

Anonymous said...

from Porthmadog, Carnarfonshire

I don't understand what the problem is!

Caroline Hunt said...

I've just been amazed at the level of tabloid coverage this has received given the distinct lack of information beyond what was announced in a Lord's debate. The Sun today still managed to pack a whole front page and inside page with essentially a 5 line story. Presumably they have teams of hacks searching the country for these twins in order to interview them and print as much "juicy" gossip as they can. Rather sickening and rather sad for the twins involved. I hope to god that any of their friends and family who know about it aren't sick enough to actually sell them out to the shits at NOTW.

Twig said...

I heard on the radio this morning that the whole story is being officially denied.
If it had happened it would have thrown up a lot of difficulties for IVF and adoption. But anyway, it didn't happen - apparently.