The Myths and Realities of Open Adoption

by Deborah Siegel, Ph.D, LICSW

Image courtesy of www.Lavenderluz.com Image courtesy of www.Lavenderluz.com

Dear Reader: I first became interested in open adoption in 1985 when, in my clinical practice, I worked with two little guys adopted from foster care.  These boys, ages 7 and 8, were tormented by unanswered questions about their first mother, “Susie,”  who suffered from mental illness and drug addiction. 

Susie’s parental rights had been involuntarily terminated due to her abusive neglect of her young sons.  A loving couple had recently adopted the boys, yet the kids continued to struggle; hence, their referral for psychotherapy with me, an adoption specialist.  The boys could not understand why they could have no contact whatsoever with Susie, as they worried endlessly about whether or not she was still alive, or if they would ever see her again.  Listening to my young clients, I too wondered why it would be so awful for them to at the very least be able to contact Susie by mail. 

Bewildered and curious myself, I looked at the adoption literature at the time.  I read a lot of beliefs about how secrecy was necessary.  But I found little if any research data to support these beliefs.

Thus began my two decade long study of families living with open adoptions.  In 1988 I identified 22 families who had just adopted an infant in open adoptions, and I have re-inteviewed these families every seven years since then in order to find out what open adoption is like, from the perspective of those who are living in it.  The infants in that study are now young adults, able […]

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Parenting Colour-Blind

by Michelle Eisler

Illustration courtesy of Jodi Queenan Illustration courtesy
of Jodi Queenan

I prayed for the woman in Haiti who would be the mother of the child we would be adopting. I felt in my heart it would be a little girl. The required adoption course seemed like a mundane step on the journey to getting “her,” but it was necessary, so I travelled three hours to be there.

I sat at the “Adoption Education” course with a group of other adoptive parents, everyone ready to learn our government-mandated course material. When the course came to the “Transracial Parenting” selection we leaned into it; this was our part. This was also the most controversial part of the course. The bulk of the parents were adopting from a different culture and many had some definitive ideas about “why it would be ok.” Obviously, most of us didn’t see colour – that’s why we weren’t shy in pursuing international adoption. […]

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Special Delivery – from Haiti

by Michelle Eisler

Reflecting on my first Mother’s Day, now three years later, my thoughts and memories are as powerful as if it was yesterday. Each morning I wake up, no matter how tired I am, and realize that I don’t take for granted the treasure that arrived on the plane January 30, 2010 – my precious daughter. Here is my original post.

michelle eisler photo

I just celebrated my first Mother’s Day this past weekend. At the age of 38 it feels late but as I understand, it isn’t as odd these days. One would think motherhood has been something I have been trying for forever but it isn’t. I’m just a late bloomer! I have, however, waited a couple of years for this but didn’t know just how much I’d truly waited, until this past January.

My husband and I were matched with Nathalia in October ’09 and would have traveled to Haiti in February 2010 to sign the first Haitian documents for our adoption process. We expected to be a family by the summer of 2010. […]

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Six Things Adoptive/Foster Families Need When New Children Arrive

by Lisa Qualls

lisa qualls

This was the question,

What would have helped you the most in the early weeks and months of adding a child to your family through adoption or foster care? If somebody had asked you, “What can I do to help?” and you were able  to answer anything at all with no shame, guilt, or concern about whether they really would want to do it, what would it have been?

This is what you answered:

Bring Food

Many of you stated that having meals delivered allowed more time to focus on all of your children, but also gave you some contact with “the outside world.”  It does not have to be dinner, as somebody said, even bringing cut-up fruit would help.  Someone else mentioned having dinner brought by friends who then shared the meal and spent the evening with them.  One person wrote that when they adopted a baby, friends brought meals, but when they adopted an older child people assumed it wasn’t as demanding and didn’t bring meals.  I think we can safely say that every adopting/foster family will be blessed by meals. […]

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Untangling the Web: The Internet’s Transformative Impact on Adoption

Dear Reader: This is a fascinating “read,” especially for those people deeply entrenched or working within the adoption community. Here’s the synopsis and a link to the material –

“Untangling the Web: The Internet’s Transformative Impact on Adoption” is the initial publication of a multiyear research project on the subject by the Donaldson Adoption Institute. Its key findings include:

  • There is a growing “commodification” of adoption on the web, replete with dubious practices, and a shift away from the perspective that its primary purpose is to find families for children.
  • Finding  birth  relatives is becoming increasingly easy and commonplace, with significant institutional and personal implications, including the likely end of the era of “closed” adoption.
  • A growing number of young adoptees are forming relationships with birth relatives, sometimes without their adoptive parents’ knowledge and usually without guidance or preparation.
  • A rising number of websites offer useful, positive resources and expedite the adoption of children and youth who need families, notably including those with special needs.
  • http://adoptioninstitute.org/research/2012_12_UntanglingtheWeb.php
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Adoption in the Media: What Do Pregnant Women, Killers and Crying Babies Have in Common?

by Adam Pertman

When we don’t fully understand something, we’re prone to make mistakes when dealing with it. This not-very-profound truism popped into my head recently as I was thinking about how to lead into a new commentary – the one you’re reading right now – about the negative repercussions of the secrecy, stigma and shame that permeated adoption for generations and, alas, sometimes still do. […]

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I Will Honor Her (In Honor of My Daughter’s Birth Mother)

by Jane D. Samuel

“Can you imagine that someone just threw her away?”

Seven years later, these words are still as sharp and wrong as the day they were innocently uttered. Carrying our youngest daughter into church that day, I did not turn around to see who said them. It did not matter.

Though I have been known to set a few folks straight about China’s one-child policy and its subsequent boom in international adoption, this time I chose to let it pass. It was Easter Vigil and our daughter’s day – she was being marked by baptism as Christ’s own forever. And she was ours forever. […]

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On Failure, Forgiveness and Cutting Ourselves Some Slack

by Peg O'Neill, M.D.

We forgot about “Gotcha Day.”  In the world of adoptive families, this is a significant faux-pas.  “Gotcha Day” is the celebration of bringing a non-biologic child into the family.  For us, it commemorates the day our family became whole; the day that my husband and I were given the gift of our precious child and entered the challenging world of raising multiple boys, with all the craziness, motion, joy and exhaustion.  For my older son, it was the day he became a sibling and began his journey as a big brother.  For my adoptive son, though he was just six months old when he joined our family forever, it is akin to a birthday – a momentous event, a beginning, a symbol of who he is, at least in part.  Over the past six years, we have commemorated “Gotcha Day” with story-telling about how we prayed for him to become part of our family, how we came to know him, and the details of how he joined our family, including how good he was on the plane coming back from Guatemala.  We look at pictures, ooh and aah over how cute and funny he was.  We go out to dinner at his favorite restaurant, a mediocre pasta joint near our house. […]

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