Hellobee

We were talking on the boards about “Open Adoption” and I realized that I haven’t touched much on this aspect of adoption, so I thought I’d revisit it.

I’ll admit that my first inclination when Mr. Jacks and I began discussing adoption was to tend towards the international route, so as to avoid any complications or entanglements with a birth family.  It wasn’t until I learned more that I realized I might be providing my child with some advantages by having an open adoption.

Let’s first define the different types of adoption, and then we can discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of each.

Closed adoption:  This is the traditional adoption of the 1950’s and after school specials.  The baby comes into the adoptive family and there is never any communication between the family of origin and the adoptive family.  This means that in all likelihood you will have no medical history and all information about the adoptive process is sealed.  Closed adoption has become less and less common in the US over time.

Open adoption:  This is a now popular option which allows birth parents and adoptive parents to see each other (frequency depends on the arrangement), talk on the phone, text, write letters, and share pertinent medical information.

Semi-open adoption:  This is usually a mediated hybrid option where letters, photos and updates are sent from both families through an intermediary such as the agency or a lawyer.  This allows for free exchange of medical history and other information, but generally does not include phone or face to face contact between families.  Semi-open arrangements allow for increasing openness as the families grow more comfortable with each other or for gradual closing if that is what is needed at the time.

C L O S E D  A D O P T I O N S

Back in the old days, it was thought that it was easier for the adoptive parents and child if the child was raised as “one of their own.” Kids sometimes weren’t even told that they were adopted and often found out when someone died or spilled the “family secret.”  In fact, we had an adoption like this in our family back in the early 1900’s.  My great-grandmother lost a child, and so my great aunt was adopted as an attempt at filling the void.  (We absolutely know now that this is not appropriate, but it was a very different time).  My great-aunt was a beloved child and had many fascinating stories — in fact, I could fill a whole blog with just her tales — but we never knew that she was adopted until after her death.  I had been putting her complicated health history as part of my own until then!  Since her adoption was never mentioned, it was hard to know how she felt about it.

However, research seems to show that children in closed adoptions have more identity issues than other adoptees, though it’s not a given.  Also, studies show that birth mothers going through closed adoptions may take a longer time to mourn their child, since they have no knowledge of how the child is doing.  Interestingly, research has also shown that adoptive parents are more fearful that the birthparents will return in a closed adoption situation.  Perhaps this is because they don’t know the birthparents, and therefore are left to wonder about them and their motivations. In addition to these issues, you also receive little or no medical information for your child.

There are some advantages to closed adoptions.  These include less fuzzy boundaries, protection from unstable family members and privacy for the birthmother.

O P E N  A D O P T I O N S

In an open adoption, there are a number of advantages.  Both birth parents and adoptive parents can experience an increased sense of control in the matching process and the adoption itself.  Openness reduces uncertainty because all parties know exactly how the others are doing.  This, in turn, has the potential to reduce birth mother guilt and fear because she knows her baby is in good hands and is thriving.  Medical information is shared between all parties for the best interest of the child.  But the biggest benefits come to the child.  Having birth parents present from the earliest days takes away any mystery and sense of abandonment.  There is no need to fantasize about some idealized birth family, because everyone knows the reality, both good and bad.  The need to search for birth family and be reunited is eliminated.  In highly functioning open adoptions, the birth family and adoptive family can act as an extended family, which actually provides more stability and reassurance to the adopted child, birth parents and to the adoptive parents.

As with any of these options, there are also drawbacks to open adoption.  Nobody seems to talk about the fact that some agencies tend to use open adoption as a selling point to birth mothers.  I get the sense that there are sometimes attempts to make it seem like the birth parents can get the best of both worlds by getting to parent without shouldering any of the responsibility.  This, if it does happen, isn’t good for either party in an open adoption.  It does help to find out how your agency presents itself to birth mothers and make sure that their approach is one that you can get behind.

Open adoption can also be a problem if there is an imbalance in the relationship (such as one party wanting more or less openness than the other), or if one of the parties is unstable and unable to maintain healthy relationships with appropriate boundaries.  Because of these issues, it’s important to draw up very specific parameters of exactly how the open relationship will work so that both parties can sign at the time of relinquishment.

S E M I – O P E N  A D O P T I O N

Semi-open adoption avoids many of the cons of both open and closed adoptions, while maintaining many of the positives of open adoption and the protections of closed adoption.  The main disadvantage from the Jacks’ family vantage point (given that this is our agency’s preferred pathway and what we and S. opted for), is that there is sometimes a fair amount of delay in getting packages and information transferred from us to S. and back again.  Our agency prefers this method, however, because it protects both the birth mother and the adoptive parents in the early stages of the relationship.  As the relationship grows and deepens, both parties can agree to more openness or less as the situation warrants.

Our agreement states that we will provide letters and pictures once a month for the first six months and then twice yearly after that until Jack Jack turns 18.  However, what we envision is that we will continue to send packets monthly for a year.  (I love putting them together anyway!)  Then, if everything goes well in the first year, we’d love to open things up MORE to regular phone contact and visits.  We adore S, L and their families and think they will greatly enrich Jack Jack’s life.  We do have a de-identified email address that we’ve been using to circumvent the slowness of information transfer through the agency.  This way I can let S. know when I’m sending a package and convey any important milestones immediately!

This is a photo that I might just pop into an email right away!

It’s great to have an idea of which type of arrangement you are leaning toward, but I would encourage anyone to wait until they are matched and familiar with the situation that they’ll be in before making any final decisions on the degree of openness they’ll share with the birth family.