I was adopted some time after birth (due to hepatitis related complications, I didn't leave the hospital for weeks, and was briefly fostered by randoms while the paperwork got sorted out), as my biological parents were drug addicts. What I know of them can be written on the back of a very small envelope.
My adoptive parents - nice white middle class box-ticking medics - were pretty much ideal parents for a sick child, though it turned out far from ideal for a QUILTBAG teen. Predictably, they were fucked up about not being able to have children of their own, and kept the fact that I and my younger[1] brother were adopted from us until I reached the later years of primary school, where easing sex-eduction into the curriculum gently with a 'baby' topic[2] forced the issue (us both having a conspicuous absence of Stuff from when we were born that wasn't well-hidden in a safety deposit box so we wouldn't discover it and ask awkward questions). I treated the news with the same excessive pragmatism that's kept me sane through everything else - it serving merely to explain why my brother looked nothing like the rest of us[3], and why my parents were obsessed with me developing a substance abuse habit. My brother took it very badly, and felt rejected, at least until my queerness changed his position in the pecking order many years later (by which point the damage had been done).
I understand that that sort of thing is more strongly discouraged these days, either directly through counselling and more structured involvement of the biological family, or indirectly through social services' underfunding and general incompetence meaning that babies are unlikely to be successfully adopted before they're old enough to be aware of what's going on[4].
[1] Not younger enough that I noticed a baby appearing overnight without the usual warnings.
[2] In the 80s, all subjects other than Maths, English and Science were taught through the medium of 'topic' work, where you'd devote weeks of all kinds of lessons to Normans, Tudors or Geography.
[3] Through luck and general Irishness, I have enough of a physical resemblance to my mum's side of the family to appear normal.
[4] This comment is bitchy and not entirely fair, but justified.
