A Look At Open Adoption For
Prospective Adopters
by: Lois Melina
If you are just starting to think about adoption, the prospect
of meeting your child's birth parents and perhaps staying in
contact with them as your child grows up may seem strange,
frightening, or just one more hoop you are expected to
jump through in the arduous process of becoming a family.
 You are not alone in feeling that way. Yet for both practical
and philosophical reasons, open adoption, in which the birth
and adoptive families have ongoing contact with each other,
is an idea you should explore and become more comfortable
with.
You are probably aware of the practical reasons. Many birth
parents will only consider placing their children with adoptive
parents who agree to send them letters or photographs, or
allow occasional phone calls or visits. But adoptive parents
should not agree to open adoptions if they just view it as
a way to get a baby. Before entering into open adoptions,
adoptive parents need to believe that there are not only
practical reasons to do so, but real benefits for their child.
To understand the benefits of open adoption it is first
necessary to understand the history of confidential adoption
and its limits. Confidential adoptions began in the first
quarter of this century as a way to protect birth mothers
and adoptees from unforgiving public attitudes toward them.
Sealed adoption records kept birth parents and adoptees from
suddenly appearing in each other's lives to reveal the truth.
As society's attitudes changed, the fact that a child was
adopted became common knowledge in the community. Birth parents
stayed in their communities through their pregnancies. The
original need to keep the birth parents away from the adoptee
so that the secret of his origin would not be revealed became
unnecessary.
At the same time, we began to learn more about what it was
like for children to grow up having been cut off from their
origins. We learned this was a significant loss unrelated
to how much adoptees loved their parents. We learned that
children sometimes felt abandoned, unwanted, and rejected
by their birth parents; that it was more difficult for them
to form a personal identity when they had little information
about their genetic origins; and that adoptees developed
fantasies - sometimes troubling ones - to fill in the missing
pieces in their personal histories.
Search for Birthfamily or Adoptee
Although many adoptees in confidential adoptions worked through
these challenges successfully, some people began to wonder
if it was necessary to put adoptees through them when the
original reason for keeping adoptions confidential was no
longer valid. Open adoptions have developed as a result.
It would be a mistake to suggest that open adoptions are
a cure-all for the deficiencies of confidential adoptions.
Open adoptions provide adoptees with the opportunity to know
they are loved and valued by the people who gave them life.
But there is nothing about exchanging names, addresses, or
telephone numbers that will guarantee this. Only a relationship
can accomplish this. For open adoption to be effective, both
the adoptive and birth family have to understand that the
primary reason for it is for the child. This means that even
when the relationship is difficult, each person makes an
effort to work through the problems.
Open adoption will complicate your life the way relationships
often do. And it's true that people who give birth rather
than adopting do not have this particular complication. But
that doesn't justify avoiding or discarding it. When we adopt,
we not only sign up for a different way of forming a family,
but we sign up for a different way of being a family. Our
children have unique needs that non-adopted children do not
have and we must make a commitment to doing whatever is necessary
to meet those needs.
Often adoptive parents find that when they are committed
to that goal, open adoptions provide rich opportunities for
joy and growth - as relationships often do.
The open adoption relationship is like the relationship
we have with our in-laws. They may not share our lifestyle
or political views. They may even be exasperating. But we
make the effort to build a relationship with them because
we have in common the love of a single person. Your spouse
is connected to his or her family regardless of whether you
like them or not. They fill a part of his or her life that
you can never fill. They have a connection whether you acknowledge
it or not. And it would be an unnecessary loss for your spouse
to have to give up one of you to gain the other.
Click
here to continue to page 2... |
