Andrew as a baby.
My parents, Anne and Alan Barton, didn’t think they could have children and tried for a number of years before eventually deciding to adopt.
This was 1967 and I was three months old. My understanding is that I’d spent those three months with my birth mother in a mother-and-baby home in Rotherham. When my Mum and Dad brought me to the family home in Barnsley all I did was cry. Maybe that was part of the bond that my Mum felt with me—to nurture me and to care for me.
Eventually I settled in and eighteen months later, they decided to adopt another little boy. I had very dark features and a Mediterranean-looking complexion. Simon had blonde curls, freckles and white skin. But my Mum was so proud of us she pushed us around in a twin pushchair and dressed us identically until we were about 11.
Seven or eight years later, my parents finally conceived successfully and had their birth child, our sister Susan. Our characters are very different but all three of us are very close to this day.
I can remember roughly when I found out I was adopted. We must have only been about four or five. The way my Mum told us, and the way she made us feel for the rest of our lives, was that we were special because we’d been chosen. Although they weren’t particularly liberal or worldly people, they just knew that as soon as Simon and I were old enough to understand, they had to tell us. So nothing was kept a secret and I really respect them for doing that.
Something else that led me to have even more respect for my Mum was the fact that my Dad died suddenly when he was 40. He had a massive heart attack at work, leaving my Mum with three children under the age of 15. My Mum did an incredible job of caring for us and as I got older she became my best mate. I think that bond is very much connected to the nature versus nurture idea. For me it’s absolutely been about nurture as we couldn’t have been any closer.
I was destroyed when I lost Mum 15 years ago and I still speak to her every single day. We had such a great relationship but we were completely different as well. I have the classic glass half full attitude to life. Mum’s glass was half empty. There was always something terrible going to happen and she worried about everything. But above everything else there was this great love, and that’s what I grew up with as a child.
It’s important to say that there was always fun and laughter in our house too. It was a very happy family. Also, on the street where we lived there were three other neighbours who had adopted children of our age. So adoption wasn’t an unusual thing for us. It probably normalised it from my Mum and Dad as well.
Neither my brother or I have ever felt any need to trace our biological families. I remember as we got older and talked more freely about being adopted, nobody would believe us because Simon looked like my Dad and I was identical to my mother. My birth mother has an English sounding name but there is no information about the birth father. Because of my dark colouring I’ve often wondered about his ethnicity and I did one of those genealogy tests a few years ago. It was all flagged: Turkish, Greek, Persian, a bit of Middle Eastern, some Southeast Asian. It was such a mix.
I’m not interested in finding out more about my background. As far as I’m concerned my mother and father and my brother and sister are the people I grew up with. They made me who I am. When I was younger I think I thought that this was the “right” way to be. Meeting other adoptees and working around adoption has helped take those blinkers off. It’s made me realise that everybody’s experience of adoption is different and unique.
Adoption is absolutely central to who I am. My Mum has given me a great faith and belief in the power of nurture. But what adoption also gave me was protection from some of the other things that then happened in my life, particularly around bullying and then coming out as a gay man in my late teens.
My childhood and my teens were all about me hiding and withdrawing, being quiet and not being seen. I would walk two hours home in the wrong direction from school just to avoid bullies. It started with, “That’s not your Mum and Dad,” and then escalated. Like many people who are bullied, I didn’t defend myself. Instead, we hide and so the victimisation accelerates.
When I got an apprenticeship as a hairdresser, everything changed and I bloomed. My true self came out because my personality wasn’t the shy fearful person I’d retreated into as a kid. I was curious, I was funny, I was happy, I was excited. You couldn’t see the real me because I was too busy running.
Earlier this year I climbed Kilimanjaro in aid of Coram Kidscape. Climbing a mountain was tough, but it was nothing like the mountain that I climbed as a bullied child. I’m so proud of all that I’ve achieved and being adopted gave me the security to build the life I have.
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