Within two years, parents who have given their children up for adoption will have the right to trace them. Lois Wren, who was adopted as a baby, explains the pull of family ties to Sarah Foster.

LOIS remembers vividly the moment she discovered she was not who she thought she was. Her older brother, then eight, had upset her with some childish insult and she, in her whining five-year-old voice had retorted with the standard threat, "I'll tell mam and dad". "They're not your mam and dad," her brother snapped back.

Little Lois felt the flicker of doubt that is the root of much childhood insecurity. This crystallised into cold, hard fact when her parents confirmed that both she and her brother were indeed adopted. Although this meant little to her at the time, the news was to change her life irrevocably.

"At the time, I was too little to understand, so it wasn't really a big thing," she says. "It's just as you are growing up that you start to understand what adoption really means. Later on, when other people found out that I was adopted, they started treating me differently. It was like I was an alien. They all wanted to sit next to me at school, and they all wanted to be my friend."

While there was no obligation for adoptive parents to tell their children the truth when Lois was growing up, in the 1960s, hers were always open and honest about the matter. "My mam and dad are the best mam and dad in the world," she says. "They always made me feel like I was special. I think I was lucky because there were a lot of bad adoptions then."

When Lois, now 44, from Newton Aycliffe, was put up for adoption at birth in 1958, the system was dominated by the church. It often catered for young unmarried women who found themselves threatened with ostracism, and was dogged by a sense of shame. There was certainly no question of children tracing their birth parents, who were told to get on with their lives as if their babies had never been born. Then, in 1976, the law changed to give adopted children access to their pasts. It was not until a series of events in Lois's life awakened her curiosity that she decided to pursue this option.

"As I got older, I had a picture of this nice family so I didn't want to rock the boat," she says. "It was when I had my children that I found it hard because people said they weren't going to have any relatives. When I became a sales rep, I started travelling about more and if anyone resembled me, I could have myself related to them in minutes. Whenever you go to the doctors or the hospital, they always ask you, 'Is this in your family?', and you have to explain you are adopted so you don't know."

Armed with only her mother's name, and with the support of her adoptive parents and her partner, Lois began the painstaking process of tracing her birth family. The Durham Diocesan group, now Durham Family Welfare, had fortunately retained her parents' last known addresses, so she was able to speak to their former neighbours. She was amazed to discover that they had lived in her own village.

"Just by pure luck, I traced all my family," she says. "My mam and dad only lived up the road when I was born, which I found quite strange. My adoptive father and birth father had been in contact without even knowing."

When Lois summoned the courage to actually get in touch with her parents, they were naturally surprised, but welcomed contact with her. "It was brilliant," she says. "No-one in the family had ever talked about it - it must have been awful. They gave me lots of information about my past, and now I've got a relationship with my birth father and my birth mother's sister. If I could have been asked at the time of my birth what I wanted, I would be where I am now, but I needed to fill in all the pieces of the jigsaw."

While her own experience was positive, Lois appreciates that reunions between adopted children and their birth parents are a potential minefield. This is likely to prove increasingly the case as new Government legislation allowing parents to trace their children, as well as vice versa, takes effect. Even with a clause allowing children to reject contact, the legislation - part of the Adoption and Children Bill - has been criticised as conferring an undeserved right.

If the situation is delicate now, with children facing further rejection from parents who still don't want them, it is likely to become more so as parents find embittered offspring. While the scales are morally weighted in children's favour - being the victims of their fates - they are weighted against parents, who presumably could have kept them. And who could blame children for deciding that their birth mothers and fathers gave up their parental rights once, and do not deserve a second chance?

Yet at no point in our conversation does Lois express animosity towards her parents. If anything, she is overly understanding, making it clear that they had no other option but to have her adopted. She believes that her lack of expectations was vital to the success of her search. "For me, it was just total curiosity - I never felt rejected and I never wanted anything from it," she says.

But she recognises that with such strong emotions involved, parent and child reunions carry enormous potential for disappointment and heartache. "I pictured this lovely family but I could have dug something horrendous up," she acknowledges. "I think there must be lots of people living in fear of being found."

Now a volunteer for the national charity After Adoption and a member of Gateshead Council's adoption panel, Lois plays a key role in placing children with suitable adoptive families. Nowadays, fewer youngsters require homes than in the past, but they are often harder to place, being older and sometimes coming as a package of siblings. They are also much more likely to have suffered neglect or abuse at the hands of their birth families, which raises a further complication under the new law.

"The big problem in my life was finding my past and accepting that I had been adopted, whereas they have got all that and all the other problems they have had," says Lois. "It makes me feel lucky and realise that mine was a really good story."

It has taken her birth family reunion for Lois, who puts an early failed marriage and having her two children young down to her adoption, to feel completely secure. Far from making her regret a life she never had with parents she never knew, it has made her appreciate her adoptive family all the more. "I have realised that you don't have to be related to people for them to be your family, and a family is the most important thing in your life," she says.

* For information and advice on issues surrounding adoption, contact local authorities or After Adoption on 0800 568 578.