Thanks so much for this thoughtful response and ongoing dialog. I wasn’t backing off at all. I do think every maternal-child separation and relinquishment, even at infancy, causes trauma. How that trauma manifests may be different for each of us. Some of us never feel it ("the primal wound"), or perhaps only experience it as a desire to know bio family, or as vague separation anxiety, or perhaps only experience it when becoming parents ourselves. I discuss this in my 2019 essay that is linked in the body of this essay, and I hyperlink to scientific data that supports this perspective. The definition of trauma is "a deeply distressing or disturbing experience." Ample scientific data supports the framing of adoption this way. You can't separate adoption from relinquishment, one doesn't happen without the other. In addition, aspects of adoption, e.g. an absence of genetic mirroring, is an ongoing distressing event for the overwhelming majority of adoptees, same with some fear of abandonment stuff. If you're thinking of "traumatized" as only debilitating violence, or totally fucked up people, sure, you won't share this perspective. Have you read The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier, or The Many Faces of Adoptees by Betty-Jean Lifton? If not, I highly recommend them.